Word.ws English Dictionary

all sizzle and no steak

all sizzle and no steak noun: a thing or person which fails to measure up to its description or advance promotion.

Noun

all sizzle and no steak (uncountable)

  1. (idiomatic) A thing or person which fails to measure up to its description or advance promotion.
    • Her latest novel is all sizzle and no steak.
    • Y2K may be the equivalent of the Kohotek comet—all sizzle and no steak.1999, "Nonprofit community increasing nervousness about Year 2000" by Gary M. Grobman. International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, vol 4 issue 2.

Synonyms of all sizzle and no steak

Questions about all sizzle and no steak

What does all sizzle and no steak mean?
All sizzle and no steak means a thing or person which fails to measure up to its description or advance promotion.
What part of speech is all sizzle and no steak?
All sizzle and no steak is a noun.

Words near all sizzle and no steak in the dictionary

  1. all sing, no dance
  2. all singing, all dancing
  3. all Sir Garnet
  4. all sixes and nines
  5. all sixes and sevens
  6. all sizzle and no steak
  7. all skin and bones
  8. all smiles
  9. All Souls
  10. All Souls Day
  11. All Souls' Day

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: all sizzle and no steak (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-all sizzle and no steak.ogg.

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