tall tale

English

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

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.

a greatly exaggerated, fantastic story

Chinese:
Cantonese: 吹水 (yue) (ceoi¹ seoi²)
Mandarin: 吹牛 (zh) (chuīniú)
Dutch: sterk verhaal
Faroese: skrøggsøga f
French: histoire à dormir debout f
German: Phantasterei (de) f, Spinnerei (de) f, Seemannsgarn (de) n
Hebrew: צ'יזבט‎ m (chizbat)
Hindi: दंतकथा (hi) f (dantakthā)
Hungarian: nagyotmondás, képtelen/hihetetlen történet, füllentés (hu), lódítás, dajkamese (hu), hanta (hu), mese (hu), háryjánoskodás
Icelandic: ýkjusaga f
Irish: scéal áibhéalach m
Japanese: ほら話 (horabanashi), 駄法螺 (dabora)
Plautdietsch: Ress m
Russian: небыли́ца (ru) f (nebylíca), ба́йка (ru) f (bájka), (vranyo, white lies) враньё (ru) n (vranʹjó)
Spanish: cuento chino m, patraña (es) f
Portuguese: história para boi dormir (pt) f, conversa fiada f, história de pescador (pt) f, conto da carochinha m
Swedish: rövarhistoria c, fantasteri (sv)
Ukrainian: небили́ця f (nebylýcja)
Yiddish: באָבע־מעשׂה‎ (bobe-mayse)