fish tales
Catch size lies
Fish tales are exaggerated stories, especially boastful accounts of personal exploits.
The phrase comes from the stereotype of anglers inflating the size of their catch: By the time he finished telling it, that fish tale had the bass weighing twenty pounds.
Any implausible or embellished narrative qualifies: His excuse for being late was another fish tale.
- tall storyImplausible exaggerated narrative
- whopperOutsized thing or untruth
- hyperboleRhetorical extreme exaggeration
- stretching the truthExaggerating while claiming honesty
- Moby DickFictional white sperm whale
fabrication · exaggeration · sea legends · myth · yarns · sea shanty · legend · embellishment · sea stories · anecdotes · untruth · fable · mermaids · hook line and sinker · overstatement · narrative · campfire stories · brag
- fish tales
- fishing lorethe one that got away, whopper, exaggeration, yarn, embellishment
- talesfunny stories, short story, yarns, folktale, ghost story
- animal storiesanimal fables, animal fable, fable, Old Yeller, The Bear
- sea jokesholy mackerel, off the hook, catch of the day, red herring, small fry
- storiesstory, myth, legend, fable, folktales
fish talesgospel truth
Claim beyond all question
unvarnished truth · documentary evidence · eyewitness testimony · sworn statements · verified accounts
fish, tale, fishes, fishing, fished, fisher, fishery, fisherman, fishy