An improbable tale; a cock-and-bull story. Examples are added, showing that the latter phrase is not entirely driven out.
1819. A fish story!… In consequence of the shoals of whitefish which occupied and choaked the channel between Bois Blanc Island and Amherstburgh, the steamboat could not pass.—St. Louis Enquirer, Dec. 8.
1823. That’s “a fish story,” but mine’s a true one.—Missouri Intelligencer, Jan. 28.
1823. A “Fish Story” has frequently been allowed to take precedence of acts calculated to arrest the arm of oppression.—Howard Gazette, Boston, Nov. 22.
1826. None of your fish stories for me; give me the result of repeated trials; tell me what you have seen and heard.—Mass. Spy, June 21.
1831. “A fish story” is told in the Troy (N.Y.) Watchman, Nov. 23.
1832. When a sailor hears a fish story, his only answer is, “Tell that to a marine!”—E. C. Wines, ‘Two Years and a Half in the Navy,’ i. 45.
1842. Fish Story. A cat fish was recently caught at St. Louis, which upon being opened was found to contain in his maw a silk purse, &c.—Phila. Spirit of the Times, July 22.
1844. The Providence Journal is great at fish stories.—Id., July 31.
1846. An old Franco-Canadian, of our crew, here favored us with, perhaps, a little the biggest fish story of any told to the present day.—Rufus B. Sage, ‘Scenes in the Rocky Mountains,’ p. 141 (Phila.).
1852. We are somewhat credulous, it is true; but the last ‘fish-story’ recorded below strikes us as improbable, ‘in point of fact.’—Knick. Mag., xxxix. 291 (March).
a. 1853. I have been told of eyeless fishes, tenanting an inky stream in that monstrous potato-hole called the Great Cave of Kentucky. It is nothing but a fish story, my incredibly credulous brethren, got up by that sort of tampering philosophers who suppose that creatures born to perpetual darkness can have no use for eyes, and consequently are generously supplied with an omission.—Dow, Jun., ‘Patent Sermons,’ iv. 137.
1853. His fish story of the old hunter, who was lynched and came to life again.—S. A. Hammett (‘Philip Paxton’), ‘A Stray Yankee in Texas,’ p. 151.
1857. After Adams had delivered himself in the wardroom of a lecture on the evils of intemperence, Hoyle, whose clay was pretty well moistened, hiccuped out: ‘Oh! go to grass with your fish stories, brother Adams!’—Knick. Mag., l. 588 (Dec.).
1795. A long cock-and-a-bull story about the Columbianum, [a proposed national college].—Gazette of the U.S., Phila., March 2.
1809. [They] never visited a foreign country, but what they told some cock and bull stories, about their being kings and princes at home.—Washington Irving, ‘Hist. of New York,’ i. 85 (1812).
1830. A terrible cock and bull story about their ship having been taken by a pirate.—N. Ames, ‘A Mariner’s Sketches,’ p. 195.
1836. He told a cock and bull story about his having come from Newark.—Phila. Public Ledger, Dec. 26.
1857. A parcel of cock and bull stories.—Knick. Mag., xlix. 43 (Jan.).
