What is the meaning of the idiom 'shaggy dog story'?

Answer 1

It in short is a story,which has an unexpected ending. A really good shaggy dog story will last 20-30 minutes, at which time the punch line makes you want to kill the storyteller! Here is the plot of the "original" shaggy dog story, as told to an unsuspecting kid (me):

A young boy says he wants a shaggy dog for Christmas (or his birthday). He is beaten and told never to say that again. As he grows older, he tries telling different people that he wants a shaggy dog. He is always treated as if he's said he wants to murder and eat babies! He gets beaten up, slapped, loses his friends, kicked out of the church - whatever horrible thing you can think of, you add into the story. Finally, he is an old, old man and he meets another old man on the street who says, "I can tell you why all this happened." As he eagerly listens, the other man explains, "The reason you are never supposed to want a shaggy dog is ---" and a bus runs over him.

The whole point is that the listener builds up a huge desire to find out what the point of the story is going to be -- and then you either don't tell them, or you have a horrible, horrible pun for the ending! There's one about a man searching for "The Tis Bottle" and at the end he sets it with a lot of other bottles and plays "My Country TIS of Thee" on them.

Answer 2

A 'shaggy dog story' is a long, rambling, and often humorous story with a pointless or anticlimactic ending. This idiom is used to describe a story that leads the listener on with a buildup that ends in a disappointing or unsatisfying conclusion.