Antedating of "Shaggy Dog Story"

[Fred Shapiro]

On Sun, 23 Feb 2003, Baker, John wrote:

>         There was an article about shaggy dog stories in Esquire in the
> 1930s, reprinted in The Bedside Esquire (1940).  I can't lay my hands on
> my copy of The Bedside Esquire (a wonderful anthology) at the moment,
> but I believe it may have been "Don't Laugh Now," by J.C. Furnas.  It
> includes the original shaggy dog joke, from which the genre apparently
> takes its name.

Thanks to this great lead by John Baker, here is a further antedating of
"shaggy dog story":

shaggy dog story (OED 1946)

1937 J. C. Furnas in _Esquire_ May in _The Bedside Esquire_ (1940) 167
They say they are known as shaggy-dog stories because the story of the
shaggy dog was the first of the lot to become popular.  That can't be
true, since the shaggy dog, besides being a poor specimen, seems to have
appeared fairly recently.


Fred Shapiro


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