Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(UK campus) at Cambridge University, a fellow-commoner, i.e. a rich or aristocratic undergraduate, with special privileges and a reputation for self-indulgent laziness.

1803		‘A Pembrochian’ Gradus ad Cantabrigiam 63: Fellow Commoners have been nick-named ‘Empty Bottles!’ They have been called, likewise ‘Useless Members’.
1852		C.A. Bristed Five Years in an Eng. University 34: They are popularly denominated ‘empty bottles,’ the first word of the appellation being an adjective, though were it taken as a verb there would be no untruth in it.
1856		B.H. Hall College Words (rev. edn) 177: At the University of Cambridge, Eng., the sobriquet of a fellow-commoner.

(US) a useless or insincere person.

1970		D. Jenkins Dogged Victims 135: ‘I knew all the rich guys [...] Most of ’em were empty suits’.
1981		H. Gould Fort Apache, The Bronx 87: He’s an empty suit, don’t even think about him.
1993		D. Brock Real Anita Hill 62: [...] which had the effect of presenting [Clarence] Thomas as something of an empty suit.
2002		K.D. Cramer When Faster Harder Smarter Is Not Enough 34: But don’t get me wrong—I am not going soft, and I certainly don’t want to evolve into a jelly roll, or a spineless empty suit.
2003		H. Hill A Good Fella’s Guide To N.Y. 161: An ‘empty suit’ or ‘jack-off’ was the mobster wanna-be, the guy that just hung around us to feel cool. We were; he wasn’t.

(N.Z.) a phr. used after breaking wind in public.

c.1938		used by Jane Morison, Havelock (Marlborough): ‘An empty house is better than a bad tenant.’ (Ed.) [DNZE].
1982		H. Beaton Outside In I i: Better an empty house than a bad tenant.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl.

mentally inadequate.

1892

Lincs. Chron. 22 Aug. 4/4: A certain country fellow [...] who was rather ’empty in the upper storey’.