all hat and no cattle

Meaning: (US,idiomatic)Full ofbig talkbut lackingaction,power, orsubstance;pretentious.1980,Patricia Calvert,The Snowbird, Scribner,→ISBN, page 29,A fortune can be made on the prairie, and that's what me and Mr. B aim to do. Don't aim to beall hat and no cattleforever, let me tell you!c.1982,Paul W. Cronin, quoted in Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein (Eds.),The American Elections of 1982, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (1983),→ISBN, page 82,They provided a lot of talk, what Texans refer to as “all hat and no cattle.”1985,Regis MacKenna,The Regis Touch: Million-Dollar Advice from America’s Top Marketing Consultant, Addison-Wesley Longman, Incorporated,→ISBN, page 27,There’s an old Texas saying about a cowboy who was “all hat and no cattle.” That is, he was all show and no substance.1998,Buffy the Vampire Slayer,"I Only Have Eyes for You"(roughly 24.5 minutes in):Drusilla: It's time, Angel. She's ready for you now, she's dancing, dancing with death.Spike: Big deal, he won't do anything. Our man Angel here likes to talk, but he's not much for action. All hat and no cattle.1999,Randy Newman, "Big Hat, No Cattle", from the albumBad Love, ASIN B00000J7R4, Uses variation of idiom in refrain:"Big Hat, no cattle / Big head, no brain / Big snake, no rattle".2001,Janis L. Edwards, "Running in the Shadows in Campaign 2000: Candidate Metaphors in Editorial Cartoons", inAmerican Behavioral Scientist, Volume 44 Issue 12, page 2142,We expect a leader to be effective in his job, not just a public relations artist who is "all hat and no cattle."2007,John Saul, "Freewheeling", inCall It Tender, Salt Publishing,→ISBN, page 31,She slapped my backside. Yew ol’ cowpoke.I’m a cowpoke?Yew certainly are.All hat and no cattle.

Examples:

EN: Most of these boys are just all hat and no cattle.
ES: Estos chicos tienen mucha experiencia, pero...
EN: He's all hat and no cattle.
ES: Mucho sombrero y poca chicha.
EN: Just waiting to prove that your Powers That Be are all hat and no cattle.
ES: - Sólo estoy esperando probar que sus Poderes son simpáticos y no sirven para nada.
EN: You're all hat and no cattle, son.
ES: Eres mucha palabra pero poca acción, hijo.
EN: - He's all hat and no cattle. - What?
ES: Es todo sombrero y sin ganado.
EN: Well, you are a lot like your daddy... all hat and no cattle.
ES: Bien, te pareces mucho a tu padre, mucho ruido y pocas nueces.
EN: Donna keeps telling me he's all hat and no cattle.
ES: Donna dice que no es más que un farsante.
EN: You're all hat and no cattle.
ES: Solo eres pura fachada.
EN: I know a man who's all hat and no cattle when I see one. Argh! It's in the trees!
ES: Conozco a un hombre que hace mucho ruido y pocas nueces cuando lo veo. - ¡Está en los árboles!
EN: In addition, they are all hat and no cattle so they could never choose it.
ES: Además, no tienen nada así que no pueden elegir.
EN: In Montana, they call it "all hat and no cattle."
ES: En Montana le dicen: "puro sombrero y sin ganado".
EN: That fella Bull, he's all hat and no cattle.
ES: Ese tipo, Bull, mucho ruido y pocas nueces.
EN: It's all hat and no cattle.
ES: Puro sombrero y nada de ganado.
EN: Don't tell me you're all hat and no cattle.
ES: No me digas que eres puro sombrero y nada de ganado.
EN: Looks like our Shaman's all hat and no cattle.
ES: Parece que nuestro chamán es todo sombrero y nada de ganado.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).