I am not after the meaning, I am wondering how this phrase originated.
Learn English – The origin of “the long and the short of it”
phrase-origin
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Here's a possible early example from The American Museum for February, 1788:
A 1752 printing of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar includes tall-tale:
Modern copies render this as:
You speak to Casca, and to such a man
That is no fleering tell-tale.
So the 1752 was probably a typo, but could the mistake have been influenced by the existence of tall-tale?
The same applies to this 1714 printing of The Life and Death of Richard III:
The idiom seems to be the opposite of keep one's shirt on. After a bit of Googling, I found the following reason which makes perfect sense to me:
So what does all this shirt business have to do with being annoyed? A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English by Eric Partridge suggests that it comes from the custom of taking off one’s shirt before fighting. I wouldn't argue with that.
Best Answer
Shakespeare actually uses the expression four times, but as ‘the short and the long’ rather than ‘the long and the short’. It occurs twice in ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ as ‘He loves your wife. There's the short and the long’ (II.i.124) and ‘Marry, this is the short and the long of it’ (II.ii.59). In 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, it’s ‘For the short and the long is, our play is preferred’ (IV.ii.34), and in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ it’s ‘Indeed, the short and the long is, I serve the Jew’ II.ii.117-18). The OED, however, has this citation from a source around 100 years earlier: ‘Thys ys the schorte and longe’.
The OED’s earliest citation for the actual words ‘the long and the short of it’ is from a work by one William Walker in 1690.
The OED’s definition is ‘the sum total, substance, upshot’. It’s not perhaps too difficult to see how the expression comes to have this meaning, suggesting as it does that, however you look at something, whether briefly or in detail, the conclusion is the same.