tall tale
English
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Pronunciation
Audio (AU) (file)
Noun
tall tale (plural tall tales)
- (idiomatic) A greatly exaggerated, fantastic story.
- He returned on Monday with a tall tale about a 100-pound fish he had caught.
- 2020 August 4, Richard Conniff, “They may look goofy, but ostriches are nobody’s fool”, in National Geographic Magazine:
- 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.
Translations
a greatly exaggerated, fantastic story
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Further reading
- “tall tale”, in Collins English Dictionary.
- tall tale at OneLook Dictionary Search
- “tall tale”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
- “tall tale” in TheFreeDictionary.com, Huntingdon Valley, Pa.: Farlex, Inc., 2003–2023.
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