Said at the start of a summary, or dropped into the middle of one, this phrase warns the listener that the speaker is about to skip the minor details and jump to the point that matters, usually the ending. It is a polite way of admitting that a full account would take too long, or that the speaker has noticed themselves rambling and wants to rein it in. The phrase can also be used a little self-mockingly, as a way of apologising for a story that has already gone on too long before the shortening begins.
What’s the origin of the phrase ‘to cut a long story short’?
The phrase was originally “to make a long story short” rather than “to cut” one, and it means simply to be brief or concise. The earliest occurrence found by etymological research appears in 1729, in The Intelligencer, a periodical produced in Dublin by Jonathan Swift and Thomas Sheridan. There it turns up not as a new expression but as one of a set of “trite Phrases” already worn smooth by overuse: “and to make a long Story short; and, as I was saying, with many more Expletives of equal Signification.” The character being mocked for using such fillers is described as “Soporifick”, a plodding talker who drones through every trivial fact of an event rather than getting to the substance of it. That the phrase is grouped with other stock expressions in 1729 suggests it was already a familiar piece of spoken cliché well before it reached print, though how much earlier it had been in circulation is not known.
The idea behind the phrase, that some stories resist being shortened, also shows up later in a different form. In an 1857 letter, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Not that the story need to be long, but it will take a long time to make it short,” a line that plays on the same joke without using the set phrase itself. The “cut” version, now the more common one, seems to be a later reworking of “make”, swapping in the more physical image of trimming something down, in the same way one might cut and run from a lengthy situation rather than see it through. Anyone tempted to draw the story out instead risks being accused of spinning a cock and bull story rather than getting to the point.