The idiom “cock n bull” refers to false, impressive, or hard-to-believe stories. Its origin is disputed, but it may come from inns called The Cock and The Bull or a mistranslation of a French idiom. The practice of telling stories during long journeys is explored in literature. Today, the phrase is used to question unbelievable stories, but originally it was meant for entertainment.
One of the more unusual idioms in English is cock n bull or things called cock and bull stories. In the earliest way they were used, these were not slang phrases. The rooster is the male rooster and the bull is the male cow. A cock and bull story, tale, or excuse is false, meant to impress, fairytale-like, or hard to believe. Its first written use dates back to the early 17th century.
There is some dispute as to the origin of this idiomatic phrase. Many believe the story of the rooster and the bull is directly linked to two inns in England called The Cock and The Bull. These may have existed before the 17th century and both were inns where travelers’ carriages stopped to refresh themselves before continuing their journey. A practice that can be traced back even further back than the existence of these inns is that of travelers making up tales to entertain each other during very long walks. This idea is fully explored in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, where each traveler tells a story to impress or delight others.
This business of telling stories at inn stops or along the road could make journeys much less boring, and literary scholars see its repetition in numerous novels in which carriage journeys are described. Charles Dickens very frequently used coaches as a time for exposition to occur or when stories were being told. Sometimes the coaches’ stories are broadcast in other places instead, and they could be so fantastic, that it was clearly unlikely that they could be believed. Another interpretation of cock n bull is that it refers to all fiction; some people of certain religious beliefs refused to read novels or simply regarded them as liars for pleasure.
There is a second origin story for the expression rooster n bull. It could be that this is a poor translation of the French idiom coq-a-l’ane, which can be translated as rooster to donkey. This may have been mistranslated into English as cock n bull because the sounds are similar.
Today the expression can be used more pejoratively to question stories that seem too unreal to be true. This is especially true when a fantastic story is used to justify why homework or some other task is not completed. When the bull-and-cock story is used as an excuse, it can simply be dismissed as outright lies. Yet the original intent of the idiom was more for entertainment than deception. In this regard, the quality of the cock and the bull story was judged by its deceit, and the more fantastical or silly the better.
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