cock-and-bull story

English

Etymology

Unknown. The phrase is noted as similar in meaning and form to French coq-à-l’âne (“satire, incoherent story”, literally “cock to the ass”) which was borrowed into Scots as cockalane.

theories of origin

Theories of the term's ultimate origin include allusions to stories which feature talking animals and that the term refers to gossip typical of what were historically two coaching inns, The Cock and The Bull, in Stony Stratford, England.

Pronunciation

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Noun

cock-and-bull story (plural cock-and-bull stories)

1. (idiomatic) A far-fetched and fanciful story or tale of highly dubious validity.

   Synonym: Banbury story of a cock and a bull

   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter XIII, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:

     The grinning landlord, as well as the boarders, seemed amazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had sprung up between me and Queequeg—especially as Peter Coffin’s cock and bull stories about him had previously so much alarmed me concerning the very person whom I now companied with.

   • 1878, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Down the Oise: To Moy”, in An Inland Voyage, London: C[harles] Kegan Paul & Co., […], →OCLC, page 141:

     Finding us easy in our ways, he […] told me a cock-and-bull story with the moral of another five francs for the narrator. The thing was palpably absurd; but I paid up, and at once dropped all friendliness of manner, and kept him in his place as an inferior with freezing British dignity. He saw in a moment that he had gone too far, and killed a willing horse; his face fell; I am sure he would have refunded if he could only have thought of a decent pretext.

   • 1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London, New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:

     "Challenger was the man who came with some cock-and-bull story from South America." "What story?" "Oh, it was rank nonsense about some queer animals he had discovered."

Translations

far-fetched and fanciful story or tale of highly dubious validity

• Catalan: conte d’indis m
• Dutch: onzinverhaal n
• French: histoire à dormir debout f, conte de bonne femme (fr) m
• German: Lügengeschichte (de) f, Münchhausengeschichte f; (jemandem was) vom Pferd erzählen (to tell someone a cock-and-bull story)
• Hungarian: dajkamese (hu)
• Irish: scéal i mbarr bata m
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: røverhistorie m or f, skrøne (no) m or f

• Polish: bajka o żelaznym wilku f
• Portuguese: história pra boi dormir
• Punjabi: ਗਪੌੜ m (gapauṛ)
• Russian: ска́зка про бе́лого бычка́ (ru) (skázka pro bélovo byčká) (a tale of a white (young) bull/calf)
• Swedish: rövarhistoria c
• Turkish: kocakarı masalı (tr)

See also

• shaggy dog story
• tall tale
• whopper