I am looking for idioms or informal/slang/colloquial expression for some people that make you think that they are able of building a skyscraper, constructing a spaceship, playing the piano better than Mozart or something very fancy that requires remarkable skills, but when it comes to practice they prove to be completely inadequate.
Learn English – n idiom for people who boast too much
colloquialismsexpressionsidiom-requestsidiomssingle-word-requests
Best Answer
There are tons of them. There's a whole sub-genre based roughly off the phrase "all talk (and no substance)". These generally have the form "all X, no Y".
Others culled from synonyms on the wictionary link below include:
My personal favorite from cattle country here in the USA is to say that a person is all hat and no cattle.
As a note to outsiders, for some people wearing a cowboy hat has become something of a cultural statement. Thus many people wear them who, if confronted with an actual cow, would have no clue which end the "moo" comes out.