Word.ws English Dictionary

all show and no go

all show and no go adjective: having only superficial qualities.

Adjective

all show and no go

  1. having only superficial qualities
    • “You know you are, and here you are doing all you can to marry nice, rich, little Kitty Marling to a man,—a kind of piebald circus horse, curious to look at, all show and no go. A duller man I don't know. Romance and you trying your best to keep Kitty from Wrexford, who's a sort of...1890, Cosmopolitan, Volume 8, Hearst Corporation, page 107
    • We who could benefit from the UN's taking action felt that they were all show and no go. The UN troops appeared to be some form of international effort to solve a problem, but they were actually making the situation worse.2008, Brigitte Gabriel, Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America, St. Martin's Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 82

Examples of all show and no go in a sentence

  • “You know you are, and here you are doing all you can to marry nice, rich, little Kitty Marling to a man,—a kind of piebald circus horse, curious to look at, all show and no go.1890, Cosmopolitan, Volume 8, Hearst Corporation, page 107:
  • The uniform of tight jeans and tube tops, slinky skirts and three-inch heels, however, is all show and no go.2014, Tony Perez-Giese, Send More Idiots: A Novel, Archway Publishing, →ISBN, page 197:

Forms of all show and no go

alternative formall show, no go

Questions about all show and no go

What does all show and no go mean?
All show and no go means having only superficial qualities.
How do you use all show and no go in a sentence?
“You know you are, and here you are doing all you can to marry nice, rich, little Kitty Marling to a man,—a kind of piebald circus horse, curious to look at, all show and no go.
What part of speech is all show and no go?
All show and no go is an adjective.

Words near all show and no go in the dictionary

  1. All Saints
  2. All Saints Day
  3. All Saints' Day
  4. all serene
  5. all set
  6. all show and no go
  7. all show, no go
  8. all sing, no dance
  9. all singing, all dancing
  10. all Sir Garnet
  11. all sixes and nines

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: all show and no 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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