story [ME] Both storey and story (and indeed *history) come from Latin historia ‘history, story’. A story was initially a historical account or representation, usually involving passages of bible history and legends of the saints. From the 1400s the word was used in connection with fictitious events for the entertainment of people. As for storey [ME], which is essentially the same word, there may have originally been a reference to tiers of painted windows or sculptures used to decorate the front of a building, each one representing a historical subject. So each tier was a different ‘story’ or, once the spelling changed (in British English), ‘storey’. Eventually the word came to refer to a level or floor of a building. At some time in the 1930s or before, someone told a long, rambling anecdote about a dog with shaggy hair. It must have caught the public imagination, as ever since then any long rambling story or joke that is only amusing because it is absurdly inconsequential or pointless has been a shaggy-dog story.