Antedating of "Shaggy Dog Story"

[Fred Shapiro]

The OED's earliest citation for "shaggy dog story" is dated 1946.  Here's
an antedating:

1944 Bennett Cerf _Try and Stop Me_ 323  Shaggy-dog stories, as almost
everybody must know by this time, are the kind of tales in which animals
talk, humans do inexplicable things, and the punch lines make no sense at
all.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
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