Friday, November 13, 2009

Football shorts

The bastardised version crops up again in the Belfast Telegraph, in a football column by Frank Brownlow:
But until Jack Charlton took the team by the scruff of the neck in 1986, the Irish were serial under achievers.
Nice players, nice football, little end product. All mouth and no trousers, if you like.


No, we don't like.

Friday, November 06, 2009

Tous les bouche et pantalon

France's Liberation newspaper shows an admirable grasp of English idiom when blogging about diddy David Cameron's latest Euro-whinge -

Conservateurs britanniques : que de la gueule! (All mouth and trousers!)

Tres bien!

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Auto erratic

Another clueless use of the bastardised form from a car reviewer, as Auto Express asks of some new hatchback:
Flagship version of SEAT's Ibiza Cupra features blacked-out grille, but is it all mouth and no trousers?
Again, this would have been fine with the proper version of the phrase - the flash exterior is there (the grill, like fancy trousers), but the question's whether it has the performance to back up its appearance.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

You wear it well

Popular recording artiste Rod Stewart shows he's got soul, as reported in American Songwriter (even if the puncutation is a little odd):
“When I was a skinny, cocky, all-mouth and trousers teenager living in North London without two pennies to rub together, I discovered the artistry of Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, James Brown, The Temptations, The Four Tops and so many more."

Monday, September 21, 2009

Taipei personality

Pleasing if odd use of the phrase in a headline over a book review in the Taipei Times:
Nick Cave’s ‘Bunny Munro’: all mouth and trousers

It's slightly odd in that the phrase doesn't appear in the copy, which is recycled from the UK Observer (where it didn't have this headline), so was presumably added by a Taiwanese sub.

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Warm trousers

The Guardian rather undercuts its worthy new 10:10 carbon-cutting campaign with meaningless bastardised vergiage, as Ian Katz writes in his introduction:
With the exception of a small, saintly portion of the population, our response to global warming is a classic case of all mouth and no trousers.

See the paper's own delightfully illustrated style guide:
all mouth and trousers
not "all mouth and no trousers"

Friday, August 07, 2009

Stake to the heart

A classic example of the bastardised form from Neil Gibbons in, cutely enough, Communicate Magazine ('The single voice for stakeholder relations', apparently - I think it might be something to do with vampires):
Of course, there’s a danger of being all mouth and no trousers. “There’s no point trying to create an image of respectability if it isn’t based upon concrete actions decided at the business level,” says Headland’s Trezise.

'Trousers' is not an apt metaphor for 'concrete actions'. It is, however, for 'an image of respectability' without anything behind it. It's another case where the original idiom would be entirely appropriate, but the bastardised form just doesn't make any sense whatsoever.