Dictionary

fat lot en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (US) audio

Meanings

1. (informal, sarcastic, uncountable, with "of ...") Little or nothing.
   • "No, sir, nor to me. I am poor, but I have never ill-used my gift." "A fat lot of use the gift is, then!" said the visitor, rising from his chair. 1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019:
   • "I never asked you to get that drug," he said. "Not in so many words," she said. "What do you mean by that?" "Well, a fat lot of fun we were going to have without it." 2001, Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections:
   • You're replacing a dead battery with another dead one! Fat lot of good that'll do you!
   • They can't launder fast enough, so what do you do with it? Where do you put it? You hide it in somebody else's place; somebody who han't got a clue what's going on and couldn't do a fat lot about it if they did. 2023, Sally Wainwright, 26:09 from the start, in Happy Valley, season 3, episode 2, spoken by Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire):
   • "Well, there's your friend Silent Simon, and all the police—" / "A fat lot of good they are!" said Ned. 1919, J. Storer Clouston, chapter 18, in Simon:

Relateds

fat chance