Word.ws English Dictionary

in a trench coat

in a trench coat prepositional phrase: pretending to be something greater, especially unconvincingly.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (humorous, slang) Pretending to be something greater, especially unconvincingly.
    • Canada is three mining companies in a trench coat, wearing a stupid hat and carrying a gun.2020 February 19, Alex V Green, “Canada is Fake”, in The Outline, archived from the original on 21 Feb 2020

Origin of in a trench coat

From a pop culture cliché in which two children, one on the other's shoulders, wear a long coat in order to pass for one adult to enter an R-rated movie theater.

Questions about in a trench coat

What does in a trench coat mean?
In a trench coat means pretending to be something greater, especially unconvincingly.
What part of speech is in a trench coat?
In a trench coat is a prepositional phrase.

Words near in a trench coat in the dictionary

  1. in a state
  2. in a stew
  3. in a stound
  4. in a sweat
  5. in a tizzy
  6. in a trench coat
  7. in a vacuum
  8. in a walk
  9. in a way
  10. in a way of speaking
  11. in a while

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: in a trench coat (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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Cite this entry: “in a trench coat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/in_a_trench_coat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.