Word.ws English Dictionary

draw the long bow

draw the long bow verb: to exaggerate; to tell tall tales.

Verb

draw the long bow (third-person singular simple present draws the long bow, present participle drawing the long bow, simple past drew the long bow, past participle drawn the long bow)

  1. (idiomatic) To exaggerate; to tell tall tales.
    • […] Dublin residents, like those jarvies waiting news from abroad, would tempt any ancient mariner who sailed the ocean seas to draw the long bow about the schooner Hesperus and etcetera.1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 1: Telemachus]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part I [Telemachia], page 16

Synonyms of draw the long bow

Forms of draw the long bow

third-person singular presentdraws the long bow
present participledrawing the long bow
pastdrew the long bow
past participledrawn the long bow

Questions about draw the long bow

What does draw the long bow mean?
Draw the long bow means to exaggerate; to tell tall tales.
What part of speech is draw the long bow?
Draw the long bow is a verb.
What is the past tense of draw the long bow?
The past tense of draw the long bow is drew the long bow.

Words near draw the long bow in the dictionary

  1. draw straws
  2. draw stumps
  3. draw the cloth
  4. draw the curtains
  5. draw the line
  6. draw the long bow
  7. draw the longbow
  8. draw the short straw
  9. draw the sponge across the slate
  10. draw the sponge over the slate
  11. draw the wet sponge across the slate

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: draw the long bow (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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