all show and no go
Appearance
English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Adjective
[edit]- having only superficial qualities
- 1890, Cosmopolitan, Volume 8, Hearst Corporation, page 107:
- “You know you are, and here you are doing all you can to marry nice, rich, little Kitty Marling to a man,—a kind of piebald circus horse, curious to look at, all show and no go. A duller man I don't know. Romance and you trying your best to keep Kitty from Wrexford, who's a sort of nineteenth-century Sidney.”
- 2008, Brigitte Gabriel, Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America, St. Martin's Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 82:
- We who could benefit from the UN's taking action felt that they were all show and no go. The UN troops appeared to be some form of international effort to solve a problem, but they were actually making the situation worse.