NOUN
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the nature of a person or organization that appears powerful but is actually powerless and ineffectual
he reminded Mao that the paper tiger had nuclear teeth
How To Use paper tiger In A Sentence
- All difficulties are also paper tigers.
- The Soviet Union was suddenly revealed as a paper tiger.
- Amy: Well, English is a paper tiger. Its natural enemy is adequate practice.
- Resultantly, the CBI has come out as merely a toothless, diseased paper tiger whose roar is more effective than its maul.
- He told the BBC's File on Four that the new inspections are "absolutely shameful, because it reduces the inspectorate to a toothless paper tiger, where nobody is physically going in". Johann Hari: This Was My Grandmother. The Way She Was Treated in the Last Ten Years of Her Life Should Be A Scandal
- The managing director has the nominal power but he is a paper tiger, and it is his assistant who actually runs the company.
- he reminded Mao that the paper tiger had nuclear teeth
- It seems to me that he is in a bind, where he's essentially either a paper tiger or he's responsible for these things; either he can't stop the bombing or he can and refuses to.
- Paper tiger. while we're no religious scholars we know the fatwah is a muslim edict of sorts. LOSTCasts 19: Even More Theories
- On a similarly skeptical note, Jeff Cohen, writing at the Huffington Post, notes Hillary Clinton's unbudging popularity despite the lack of netroots support and asks if the netroots are simply a paper tiger. Daily Digest: 9/6/07