See empty suit in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
{
"etymology_text": "Derived from unfavorable observations that ineffective professionals are memorable only for their attire and not their accomplishments at the workplace. First use appears c. 1950 in the New York Times.",
"forms": [
{
"form": "empty suits",
"tags": [
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]
}
],
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{
"_dis1": "0 0",
"word": "Peter principle"
}
],
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{
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"parents": [],
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}
],
"coordinate_terms": [
{
"word": "stuffed shirt"
}
],
"glosses": [
"An ineffective or incompetent person in a place of authority."
],
"id": "en-empty_suit-en-noun-mShBlDf6",
"links": [
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],
[
"politics",
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],
[
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],
[
"incompetent",
"incompetent"
],
[
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]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(slang, derogatory, idiomatic, also politics) An ineffective or incompetent person in a place of authority."
],
"tags": [
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"idiomatic",
"slang"
],
"topics": [
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"politics"
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{
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},
{
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},
{
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},
{
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{
"bold_text_offsets": [
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15,
25
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],
"text": "John Doe is an empty suit running on an anti-populist platform.",
"type": "example"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A politician who has not fulfilled any campaign promises."
],
"id": "en-empty_suit-en-noun-FQIvJjMG",
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],
[
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],
[
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],
[
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],
[
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]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(politics) A politician who has not fulfilled any campaign promises."
],
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"government",
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]
}
],
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{
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"etymology_text": "Derived from unfavorable observations that ineffective professionals are memorable only for their attire and not their accomplishments at the workplace. First use appears c. 1950 in the New York Times.",
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{
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"tags": [
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]
}
],
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{
"args": {},
"expansion": "empty suit (plural empty suits)",
"name": "en-noun"
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],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"related": [
{
"word": "Peter principle"
}
],
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{
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],
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}
],
"glosses": [
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],
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],
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"politics",
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[
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],
[
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],
"raw_glosses": [
"(slang, derogatory, idiomatic, also politics) An ineffective or incompetent person in a place of authority."
],
"tags": [
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"idiomatic",
"slang"
],
"topics": [
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"politics"
]
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],
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{
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15,
25
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],
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}
],
"glosses": [
"A politician who has not fulfilled any campaign promises."
],
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[
"politics",
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],
[
"politician",
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],
[
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],
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],
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"(politics) A politician who has not fulfilled any campaign promises."
],
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"government",
"politics"
]
}
],
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}
],
"wikipedia": [
"New York Times"
],
"word": "empty suit"
}
Download raw JSONL data for empty suit meaning in English (2.2kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-01-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-01-01 using wiktextract (96027d6 and 9905b1f). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.