All hat and no cattle

    虚有其表、光说不练All hat and no cattle字面解释是“只有帽子没有牛”。这是什么意思？请看对话：

    A: Mike said he would take us on a day tour to the seaside after he bought his new van.

    B: Don’t believe him. That guy is all hat and no cattle.

    Note: All hat and no cattle is an American expression used to describe someone who is all show and no substance. People also say “Big hat, no cattle.” Hat refers to the cowboy hat herders wear in the American West. The cowboy hats are big and showy hats with a wide circular edge. They make the cowboys look very impressive. And in the frontier days, if people wore cowboy hats but were not seen riding horses and had no cattle to own and herd, they were described negatively as all hat and no cattle. To put it in a dog idiom, we can say “all bark and no bite.”