Dickless Tracy
- noun
- Offensive
:
cagón
- Whenever he talks big but backs down, everyone calls him Dickless Tracy.
Examples
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They're always making jokes about Mark being a real Dickless Tracy when he tries to intimidate people.
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She laughed and dubbed her classmate Dickless Tracy after he failed to keep his boast.
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Don't be such a Dickless Tracy at the meeting!
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I can't believe he acted like a Dickless Tracy yesterday.
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When he avoided the confrontation, his friends jokingly called him Dickless Tracy.
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After bragging about his skills, he showed his true colors and earned the nickname Dickless Tracy.
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She labeled him Dickless Tracy for pretending to be tough but backing down at the last moment.
Synonyms
4
9.9
A person who is weak and lacks courage or strength
1
9.9
A person who acts important but is not powerful or skilled
1
9.9
An insulting word for someone who is weak or too afraid to act
Surface Forms
Morphology
dickless + Tracy
The phrase depends on a cultural reference to the comic-strip character 'Dick Tracy' plus a vulgar slang adjective 'dickless', so its intended ironic sense (a would-be tough person who lacks real courage) cannot be straightforwardly derived by a B1 learner even if they know the constituent words. Because it requires background knowledge of the named character and slang usage—and is socially marked and idiomatic—the meaning is unpredictable from the parts alone.
Etymology
Dickless Tracy plays on the famous comic detective Tracy and the joking word Dickless, where 'less' means 'without'. So it creates the picture of the tough hero suddenly 'without' what makes him brave, and is used for someone who 'pretends to be strong but is really weak'.