Meaning
An absurd, far-fetched, or obviously false account offered as an explanation or excuse; an implausible tale. It implies the listener is not expected to believe it. Informal and dismissive; used to reject an account as nonsense or deliberate fabrication. Regional use: General English.
Origin
The first known use of 'a tale of a Cock and a Bull' in English is in John Day's 1608 comedy 'Law-trickes'. Randle Cotgrave's 1611 French-English dictionary glosses the French 'coq-a-l'ane' (literally cock-to-donkey) as an incoherent story jumping from subject to subject, a related French and Scots expression that may have influenced the English phrase; etymologists also point to old folk tales in which cocks and bulls talk. A widely repeated legend attributes the phrase to two rival coaching inns at Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire, the Cock and the Bull, where travellers' tales supposedly grew in the telling; The Phrase Finder finds no evidence whatsoever for this, calls it a twentieth-century invention, and notes that early citations refer to the animals, not the pubs.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a tale of a cock and a bull
- cock and bull tale
- cock-and-bull story
- that's a lot of cock and bull
Usage Examples
- His excuse for missing the deadline was a cock and bull story about a stolen bicycle.
- The official explanation sounded like a cock and bull story concocted an hour before the press conference.
- Don't give me that cock and bull story; just tell me where you were.