just-so story

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Jump to navigation Jump to search

English

[edit]
WOTD – 30 December 2024

Etymology

[edit]
PIE word
*swé
An illustration from the story “The Elephant’s Child” in Rudyard Kipling’s book Just So Stories, showing that the elephant got its trunk from having its nose pulled by a crocodile.

From just so (“(almost) exactly or precisely like something”, adjective) + story, referring to the series of short stories called Just So Stories (collected in book form in 1902) by the English writer Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936)[1] which described how various animals acquired their distinctive characteristics, such as how the leopard got its spots. According to Kipling, the stories were so titled because they were intended to put his daughter Josephine (“Effie”) to sleep, “and you were not allowed to alter those by one single little word. They had to be told just so; or Effie would wake up and put back the missing sentence.”[2]

Pronunciation

[edit]

Noun

[edit]

just-so story (plural just-so stories)

  1. A story which supposedly explains the beginning or early development of a current state of affairs; a myth, a pourquoi story.
    Coordinate terms: backstory, origin story
  2. (literature) A story, especially one for children, featuring animals as characters.
  3. (social sciences, especially anthropology, philosophy, chiefly derogatory) An untestable explanation for something, such as a form of behaviour, a biological trait, or a cultural practice.
    • 1978 November 16, Stephen Jay Gould, “Sociobiology: The Art of Storytelling”, in Bernard Dixon, editor, New Scientist, volume 80, number 1129, London: IPC Magazines, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 532:
      Sociobiological explanations of human behaviour encounter two special difficulties, suggesting that a Darwinian model may be generally inapplicable in this case. […] Secondly, the standard foundation of Darwinian just-so stories does not apply to humans. That foundation is the implication: if adaptive, then genetic—for the inference of adaptation is usually the only basis of a selective story, and Darwinism is a theory of genetic change and variation in populations.

Translations

[edit]
story which supposedly explains the beginning or early development of a current state of affairs — see also myth

References

[edit]
  1. ^ “just-so story, n.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, July 2023.
  2. ^ Rudyard Kipling (1897 December) “The ‘Just-so’ Stories”, in Mary Mapes Dodge, editor, St. Nicholas: An Illustrated Magazine for Young Folks, volume XXV, part I, number 2, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co.; London: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, page 89.

Further reading

[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=just-so_story&oldid=82427649"