Meaning of there is no there there | Babel Free

Definitions

The indicated thing, person, or other matter has no distinctive identity, or no significant characteristics, or no functional center point; nothing significant exists in that place; nothing significant is occurring in that situation.

idiomatic

Examples

“She took us to see her granddaughter who was teaching in the Dominican convent in San Raphael, we went across the bay on a ferry, that had not changed but Goat Island might just as well not have been there, anyway what was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there.”

“There is a character issue for Mr. Bush in this campaign. The clothes have no emperor. There is no there there.”

“This desire to express national difference comes at a time when the world is shrinking rapidly and travellers arrive halfway across the globe to find that there is no "there" there.”

“Cog is an artificially intelligent computer that is trying to learn about the world. . . . Cog's "mind," similarly, is just a collection of loosely coordinated digital reflexes scattered among its eight processors, with no one place to point to as the seat of intelligence. "There's no there there," notes Brooks with a touch of pride.”

“Mill Creek . . . still lacks a geographic heart. . . . There's no "there" there, no center to the city—unless you count the private Mill Creek Country Club or the grocery-store shopping centers.”

“With Trump, there’s no there there. That is, no substance—not if substance is taken to mean a coherent set of policy proposals.”

CEFR level