Other forms: sagas
A saga is a long story covering many years and usually several generations — a family saga, the Icelandic sagas, a saga in three volumes. The word promises length and a sense of history.
The strict sense is a medieval Icelandic prose narrative, and those sagas are the source of most of what is known about Norse settlement. In everyday use the word has softened into mild complaint: the whole saga of getting the boiler fixed. That use means a long, drawn-out business with too many episodes, and it is now probably the commonest one in speech. Note that saga is not the same as epic: an epic is grand, a saga is merely long.
1nounsagaA long story covering many years or generations.
“The novel is a family saga running from 1900 to the war.”
2nouncomplicatedA long and complicated series of events, often tiresome.
“Getting the passport renewed was a saga.”
3nounmedievalA medieval Icelandic prose narrative.
“The sagas were written down two centuries after the events.”
saga is a long story.
Old Norse saga meant simply a story or something said, from a root meaning to say — the same root as the English verb say and the noun saw in old saw, a saying. The Icelandic sagas are, in their own language, just the tellings.
Proto-Indo-European
*sekʷ- — to say
Proto-Germanic
*sagǭ — saying, story
Old Norse
saga — epic tale, story
English, today
saga
From Old Norse saga (“epic tale, story”), from Proto-Germanic sagǭ (“saying, story”), from Proto-Indo-European sekʷ- (“to say”). Cognate with Old English sagu (“story, tale, statement”), Old High German saga (“an assertion, narrative, sermon, pronouncement”), Icelandic saga (“story, tale, history”), German Sage (“saga, legend, myth”). More at say; a doublet of saw. Compare typologically ἔπος (whence epos, epic) << wekʷ- (“to speak”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA