Word.ws English Dictionary

all dressed up and no place to go

all dressed up and no place to go is the alternative form of all dressed up and nowhere to go.

Meaning of all dressed up and nowhere to go

Adjective

all dressed up and nowhere to go (not comparable)

  1. (idiomatic) Elaborately attired or otherwise fully prepared for an anticipated situation or activity which, nevertheless, fails to occur.
    • Listen to my tale of woe, It's terribly sad but true. All dressed up, no place to go, Each evening I'm awfully blue.1924 December 1, the musical "Lady, Be Good!," premiered on Broadway at the Liberty Theatre; music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin. Therein, the introductory verse to the song "Oh, Lady be...
    Synonyms:
    confounded, stymied

Questions about all dressed up and no place to go

What is all dressed up and no place to go the alternative form of?
All dressed up and no place to go is the alternative form of all dressed up and nowhere to go.

Words near all dressed up and no place to go in the dictionary

  1. all cry and no wool
  2. all day
  3. all dogged up
  4. all dogged-up
  5. all dressed
  6. all dressed up and no place to go
  7. all dressed up and nowhere to go
  8. all dressed up with no place to go
  9. all dressed up with nowhere to go
  10. all duck or no dinner
  11. all ears

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: all dressed up and no place to go (page history and authors); all dressed up and nowhere to go (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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