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 cut a long story short, the mound works like a lung.
—
Steven Strogatz, Quanta Magazine, 12 June 2025
To cut a long story very short, the sting is to try and get the victim to send a 2FA Gmail account recovery code that will be sent.
—Davey Winder, Forbes.com, 8 May 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
The ending is a long story about a woman Wood has been dating and the period when he’s first introduced to her son.
—Kathryn Vanarendonk, Vulture, 17 Jan. 2025
Cutting a long story short, a vocal minority of reactionary gamers is perturbed that a sci-fi video game features a Black samurai protagonist, despite the game’s hokey premise centering on the genetic recording of memories written to computer software.
—Lewis Gordon, Vulture, 8 Jan. 2025
To make a long story short, the US monitors recorded a split-second event on March 8, 1968 at 11:59:47 pm that could have been a submarine breaking up.
—David Szondy, New Atlas, 4 Jan. 2025
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Steven Strogatz, Quanta Magazine, 12 June 2025
To cut a long story very short, the sting is to try and get the victim to send a 2FA Gmail account recovery code that will be sent.
—Davey Winder, Forbes.com, 8 May 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
The ending is a long story about a woman Wood has been dating and the period when he’s first introduced to her son.
—Kathryn Vanarendonk, Vulture, 17 Jan. 2025
Cutting a long story short, a vocal minority of reactionary gamers is perturbed that a sci-fi video game features a Black samurai protagonist, despite the game’s hokey premise centering on the genetic recording of memories written to computer software.
—Lewis Gordon, Vulture, 8 Jan. 2025
To make a long story short, the US monitors recorded a split-second event on March 8, 1968 at 11:59:47 pm that could have been a submarine breaking up.
—David Szondy, New Atlas, 4 Jan. 2025
Cite this Entry
“A long story.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/a%20long%20story. Accessed 16 Jul. 2025.
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