empty suit

noun Slang. an executive, manager, or official regarded as ineffectual, incompetent, or lacking in leadership qualities such as creativity and empathy: Their executive search came up with one empty suit after another.

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empty suit
noun
: an ineffectual executive

Examples of empty suit in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Shiv is aghast and, before stomping off, calls Tom an empty suit.
—Anne Branigin, Washington Post, 29 May 2023
Clinton ended up being an empty suit.
—D. Roger Pederson, Star Tribune, 18 July 2021
What an overpaid empty suit.
—Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica, 24 Sep. 2020
The conference commissioner is an empty suit.
—John Canzano, oregonlive, 24 Sep. 2020
Joe Biden is an empty suit.
—Fox News, 10 July 2020
Legendary’s Draemond Winding is not a con man, just an empty suit—Goliath with a sales pitch.
—Jessica Winter, The New Yorker, 16 Mar. 2023
Instead, she’s hid behind her spokespeople like an empty suit in charge of an underperforming office.
—John Canzano, oregonlive, 23 Oct. 2020
Trump’s team has tried to paint Biden as an empty suit trying to disguise the threat of socialism.
—Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review, 29 Sep. 2020
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'empty suit.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.



Word History
First Known Use
1950, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of empty suit was in 1950
See more words from the same year

Dictionary Entries Near empty suit
empty out

empty suit

empty threat