Word.ws English Dictionary

all dressed up and nowhere to go

all dressed up and nowhere to go adjective: elaborately attired or otherwise fully prepared for an anticipated situation or activity which, nevertheless, fails to occur.

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...
    • General Fauso Topete's troops, encamped south of here and faced with the impossible problem of how to attack the federal garrison without firing into Naco Ariz., virtually were in the position of soldiers all dressed up and nowhere to go.1929 April 9, “All Dressed Up, No Place to Go; Rebels Problem”, in Ellensburg Daily Record, retrieved 09 Mar 2013, page 1
    Synonyms:
    confounded, stymied

Examples of all dressed up and nowhere to go in a sentence

  • "Otherwise you're like a man without a ticket — all dressed up and nowhere to go."1980 December 23, “Reagan's Advisers Split over 'Emergency' Idea”, in Vancouver Sun, Canada, retrieved 09 Mar 2013, page E3:
  • For many of the commanders at sea, it was a classic "all dressed up and nowhere to go" scenario.2003 March 20, Meenakshi Ganguly, “Opening Night Aboard the U.S.S. Constellation”, in Time:
  • All dressed up and nowhere to go, nearly 7,000 competitors in almost 1,000 yachts were left drifting around in the central Solent yesterday.2004 August 8, Mike Turner, “Sailing: Harrison's day in calm before storm”, in The Independent, UK, retrieved 09 Mar 2013:

Synonyms of all dressed up and nowhere to go

Forms of all dressed up and nowhere to go

alternative formall dressed up and no place to go
alternative formall dressed up with no place to go
alternative formall dressed up with nowhere to go

Questions about all dressed up and nowhere to go

What does all dressed up and nowhere to go mean?
All dressed up and nowhere to go means elaborately attired or otherwise fully prepared for an anticipated situation or activity which, nevertheless, fails to occur.
How do you use all dressed up and nowhere to go in a sentence?
"Otherwise you're like a man without a ticket — all dressed up and nowhere to go."
What part of speech is all dressed up and nowhere to go?
All dressed up and nowhere to go is an adjective.

Words near all dressed up and nowhere to go in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-all dressed up and nowhere to go.ogg.

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