Talk:cock-and-bull story

Etymology

 * 1) The term is believed to have originated from  stage coach travellers' gossip and rumour exchanged between two  coaching inns, The Cock and The Bull in  Stony Stratford, England.  These inns were a main stopping point on the  turnpike road from  London to  Birmingham,  Chester and  North Wales (for  Ireland).  Further discussion below.
 * 2) Other commentators suggest that its origin is in mythical or fictional conversations among animals (such as in the first story of Arabian Nights).  However, this derivation seems to be based on the supposition that the French expression "coq-a-l'ane" ("cock to donkey") has been imported into English.  This is not an unreasonable supposition, since the  Lallans (Scots) word "cockalayne" appears to be a direct phonetic transfer from the French.

This book is a French collection of several "letters of a cock to a bull" dating from the 16th century. DCDuring TALK 17:54, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
 * In modern French, the expression passer du coq à l'âne means "to change the subject of a conversation abruptly". --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 12:02, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Additional remarks on 'two inns' derivation
The Cock Hotel is documented to have existed [in one form or another - 'great fires' were common!] on the current site since at least 1470; the provenance of The Bull is less well documented but is certainly older than 1600.

Microsoft (R)[tm](c) Encarta [tm] is unimpressed by this evidence, calling it "folk etymology".

First recorded use
The first recorded use of the phrase was in John Day's 1608 play Law-trickes or Who Would Have Thought It: "What a tale of a cock and a bull he told my father."

A cook and bull story means
1.unbelievable gossip 2.a children's fable 3.a quarrelsome dialogue 4.competiton between equals 106.76.214.238 05:03, 27 November 2022 (UTC)