Meaning
To tell a long story, usually an entertaining, exaggerated or far-fetched one - often one the teller has embellished along the way. Typically takes an object or adjective ('spin us a yarn', 'spin a good yarn'), and 'yarn' alone also names such a story. Neutral to affectionate, though it can hint that a tale should not be swallowed whole. Informal and conversational; affectionate about storytellers, sceptical when applied to excuses and alibis. Regional use: General English.
Origin
Recorded from 1816: Word Histories has found two occurrences that year, a poem in the Leicester Journal (August 1816, 'And spin long yarns') and a sailor's letter reprinted in the Richmond Enquirer (November 1816). These predate the commonly cited first record, James Hardy Vaux's Vocabulary of the Flash Language (1819), a convict-slang glossary defining 'yarning or spinning a yarn' as a favourite amusement of 'flash-people'. Early uses cluster in naval settings, and the phrase is generally taken to be nautical slang - perhaps coined while sailors made spun-yarn rope aboard ship, long and tedious work that invited storytelling - though that last link is plausible inference rather than documented record. Wiktionary offers the more general metaphor of drawing out fibres into a continuous thread.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- a good yarn
- spin a good yarn
- spin a long yarn
- spin someone a yarn
- yarn-spinning
Usage Examples
- Grandad would spin a yarn about his mining days every time the family gathered for Sunday lunch.
- Do not take everything the salesman says at face value; he can spin a yarn with the best of them.
- At the reunion, the old colleagues spent the evening spinning yarns about their first trade show.