all dressed up and nowhere to go
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Feeling prepared or eager but lacking an opportunity to act
Literally: wearing formal clothes without a destination
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
[It's]a case of ‘ all dressed up and nowhere to go. ’’
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “all dressed up and nowhere to go” mean?
Feeling prepared or eager but lacking an opportunity to act Literally: wearing formal clothes without a destination
Is “all dressed up and nowhere to go” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.