"empty suit" meaning in English

See empty suit in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: empty suits [plural]
Etymology: Derived from unfavorable observations that ineffective professionals are memorable only for what they wear and not what they accomplish at the workplace. [c. 1970] Head templates: {{en-noun}} empty suit (plural empty suits)
  1. (derogatory) A person in a position of authority who is ineffective or incompetent. Tags: derogatory Related terms: stuffed shirt
    Sense id: en-empty_suit-en-noun-AuyDoCr7 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for empty suit meaning in English (1.0kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Derived from unfavorable observations that ineffective professionals are memorable only for what they wear and not what they accomplish at the workplace. [c. 1970]",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "empty suits",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "empty suit (plural empty suits)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A person in a position of authority who is ineffective or incompetent."
      ],
      "id": "en-empty_suit-en-noun-AuyDoCr7",
      "links": [
        [
          "derogatory",
          "derogatory"
        ],
        [
          "authority",
          "authority"
        ],
        [
          "ineffective",
          "ineffective"
        ],
        [
          "incompetent",
          "incompetent"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(derogatory) A person in a position of authority who is ineffective or incompetent."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "stuffed shirt"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "derogatory"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "empty suit"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "Derived from unfavorable observations that ineffective professionals are memorable only for what they wear and not what they accomplish at the workplace. [c. 1970]",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "empty suits",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "empty suit (plural empty suits)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "stuffed shirt"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English derogatory terms",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A person in a position of authority who is ineffective or incompetent."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "derogatory",
          "derogatory"
        ],
        [
          "authority",
          "authority"
        ],
        [
          "ineffective",
          "ineffective"
        ],
        [
          "incompetent",
          "incompetent"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(derogatory) A person in a position of authority who is ineffective or incompetent."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "derogatory"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "empty suit"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-06-23 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-06-20 using wiktextract (1b9bfc5 and 0136956). 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.