empty suit
an executive, manager, or official regarded as ineffectual, incompetent, or lacking in leadership qualities such as creativity and empathy: Their executive search came up with one empty suit after another.
Origin of empty suit
1Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use empty suit in a sentence
Remember his summer blitz of attack ads about Obama being an empty suit, a celebrity and a pretty face and all that?
And far from defining him as an empty suit, it suggests he is one filled with both hubris and sanctimony.
Ali had devised a method of protection for the empty suit the Medic would wear—had that held?
Plague Ship | Andre NortonI open the case—I take out the collar—I place it gently on the porch railing—and I take the empty suit-case into the house.
The Cheerful Smugglers | Ellis Parker ButlerWe furnished him with an empty suit-case, and, from the window, watched him making for Mitre Court at a smart double.
John Thorndyke's Cases | R. Austin Freeman
Other Idioms and Phrases with empty suit
An unimportant person; also, a phony. For example, Don't pay any attention to him—he's just an empty suit, or She acts as though she knows what she's doing, but she's really an empty suit. This graphic expression calls up the image of an empty suit of clothes. [c. 1970]
The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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