a fat lot

English

Noun

a fat lot (uncountable)

1. (informal, sarcastic, chiefly in the possessive) Little or nothing.

   You're replacing a dead battery with another dead one! A fat lot of good that'll do you!

   • 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:

     "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.

   • 2001, Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections:

     "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."

   • 2023, Sally Wainwright, 26:09 from the start, in Happy Valley, season 3, episode 2, spoken by Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire):

     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.

Related terms

• fat chance

Anagrams

• float at