tall tale
nounUK /tɔːl ˈteɪl/ · US /tɔl ˈteɪl/
Etymology From tall (“exaggerated”) + tale.
1
Idiomatic A tale or story which is fantastic and greatly exaggerated; also, an account of questionable veracity; a lie, an untruth.
- He returned on Monday with a tall tale about a 100-pound fish he had caught.
- The head-in-sand idea is a threadbare, 2,000-year-old hand-me-down from the Roman naturalist Pliny, who sometimes passed on tall tales.2020 August 4, Richard Conniff, “They may look goofy, but ostriches are nobody’s fool”, in National Geographic Magazine:
- Related terms
- shaggy dog story, whopper