: one that is outwardly powerful or dangerous but inwardly weak or ineffectual
Examples of paper tiger in a Sentence
The new laws are just paper tigers without any method of enforcement.
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Only after Israel aggressively asserted itself and its right to exist — ignoring constant criticism from a Biden White House looking to appease progressives and terrorist sympathizers — was Iran exposed as a paper tiger.—Editorial, Boston Herald, 17 Jan. 2025 And while everyone is patting themselves on the back for exposing Hezbollah in Lebanon as a paper tiger, driving Assad from power and comprehensively embarrassing Iran, the victory is likely to be short-lived.—Yaakov Katz, Newsweek, 16 Jan. 2025 One of the most conspicuous paper tigers in American foreign policy is the Leahy Law, experts say.—Brett Murphy, ProPublica, 15 Jan. 2025 But for the acquisition to fail so quickly, was Autonomy a paper tiger after all, and Lynch simply the mastermind of a spectacular fraud?—airmail.news, 19 Aug. 2024 See All Example Sentences for paper tiger
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