Talk:all hat and no cattle

Segregation of 1980 quotation: Is it justified?

I don't read the 1980 quotation as illustrating a (currently undefined) sense of "all hat and no cattle" different from the sense represented by the other quotations. It seems to me that the precise wording in the definition ("full of big talk but lacking action") can be smoothly swapped into the 1980 quotation (replacing "all hat and no cattle"). From what I can glean of the context of the 1980 quotation, immediately before the quoted remark the speaker is talking about how a "fortune can be made on the prairie" (big talk!). In fact, I very much doubt that there are any more senses of this idiom than the one currently defined in the entry. -- WikiPedant 03:58, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. I took our definition to be = "talking like one is more important than one is", and I didn't think the 1980 quote exemplified that. Maybe I'm just reading too much into it? —Ruakh_TALK 04:09, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Ruakh, I think the now-expanded 1980 quotation can be seen to be consistent with the sense you articulated in the preceding comment. The writer is talking about their high-falootin' goals, saying "I aim to be rich and a big shot." It's the 2007 quotation that strikes me as the one which may be shading off in another direction. In the 2007 quotation (as best I can glean from a quick scan of the context) an old Texan gal and her guy are in Paris and she is sort of teasing him/flirting with him, calling him a cowboy (which he isn't) and saying he's all hat and no cattle, which may or may not teasingly mean that he's a pseudo-cowboy or low-level cowboy in the cowboy pecking order. I doubt, however, that the 2007 quotation really represents any established new sense of the term; I suspect it's just writing that's a tad over the top, as the author throws in every dad-gum, varmint-lovin', ol'-Western-soundin' turn-of-phrase he can think of. -- WikiPedant 06:16, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

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all hat and no cattle

Can we have some references for this and its synonyms, please? I haven't heard of any of them. I think Connel entered them, so perhaps he might be able to add some.

Note also that all of the synonyms listed link to the page for "all hat and no cattle", which is bad. — Paul G 08:55, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Hey, hey! [1] I only reformatted it. The main one I've heard; the others sound plausible enough to my ear. Each one seems like a colorful use of the English language, but I agree they probably are not strict idioms. --Connel MacKenzie 16:14, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

How is big hat, no cattle an "alternative spelling"? People really do like to abuse that heading. DAVilla 16:44, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, yes, you certainly can blame me for trying to standardize headings. September 2005 was long before "Alternative forms" was deemed acceptable, IIRC. --Connel MacKenzie 06:06, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Is it acceptable now? I don't know what an alternative form is. An alternative spelling was something that meant the same thing and that I would pronounce the same way. Call me old-fashioned, I guess. DAVilla 18:49, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I think it is all better now? --Connel MacKenzie 17:18, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Now cited. —Ruakh_TALK 19:23, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

• Struck, per above. Cheers! bd2412 T 15:40, 2 September 2007 (UTC)