a long story
noun
: a description of how something happened that is complicated to explain
"Why are you late?" "It's a long story. I'll tell you later."
Examples of a long story in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
And, to make a long story short, birds see these colors.
—
Quanta Magazine, 21 Aug. 2025
Gutfeld instead told a long story about a drunken Fallon wrestling him to the ground.
—Bethy Squires, Vulture, 8 Aug. 2025
To make a long story short: After a few (split) U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including a blistering dissent by none other than Justice Thurgood Marshall, U.S. law makes an exception to the Fourth Amendment for Americans’ financial records due to something called the third-party doctrine.
—Norbert Michel, Forbes.com, 7 Aug. 2025
The end of Elon Musk’s time at the helm of the Department of Government Efficiency is the latest chapter in a long story: Republicans are better at cutting taxes than cutting spending.
—W. James Antle Iii, The Washington Examiner, 3 June 2025
What’s going on? To make a long story short, OpenAI has trained its primary ChatGPT model, GPT-4o, to act like a sycophant because in the past, people have liked it.
—ArsTechnica, 21 Apr. 2025
This is a long story, but in short: Osimhen signed a new contract at Napoli a few months after that title success.
—Joshua Kloke, New York Times, 4 Apr. 2025
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Quanta Magazine, 21 Aug. 2025
Gutfeld instead told a long story about a drunken Fallon wrestling him to the ground.
—Bethy Squires, Vulture, 8 Aug. 2025
To make a long story short: After a few (split) U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including a blistering dissent by none other than Justice Thurgood Marshall, U.S. law makes an exception to the Fourth Amendment for Americans’ financial records due to something called the third-party doctrine.
—Norbert Michel, Forbes.com, 7 Aug. 2025
The end of Elon Musk’s time at the helm of the Department of Government Efficiency is the latest chapter in a long story: Republicans are better at cutting taxes than cutting spending.
—W. James Antle Iii, The Washington Examiner, 3 June 2025
What’s going on? To make a long story short, OpenAI has trained its primary ChatGPT model, GPT-4o, to act like a sycophant because in the past, people have liked it.
—ArsTechnica, 21 Apr. 2025
This is a long story, but in short: Osimhen signed a new contract at Napoli a few months after that title success.
—Joshua Kloke, New York Times, 4 Apr. 2025
Cite this Entry
“A long story.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/a%20long%20story. Accessed 10 Sep. 2025.
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