How to Use paper tiger in a Sentence
paper tiger
noun- The new laws are just paper tigers without any method of enforcement.
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That's a problem for a climate movement that looks good on the web but is a paper tiger in the real world.
—Keith Kloor, Discover Magazine, 24 July 2012
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Meanwhile, the Bucks — less than a week removed from owning an 18-game win streak — were cast as a paper tiger.
—Matt Velazquez, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 5 Feb. 2020
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The Child/Grogu’s adorableness, and the show’s arch-villain to this point, Moff Gideon, was revealed to be a paper tiger in the season-two finale.
—Isaac Schorr, National Review, 26 Dec. 2020
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The Pirates, with a 7-1 record highlighted by a road win over No. 4 Michigan, were no paper tiger.
—Nick Moyle, San Antonio Express-News, 10 Dec. 2021
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That means the Fed, long a paper tiger, will have to keep pushing rates higher until the cost of living finally backs down.
—Jason Zweig, WSJ, 13 May 2022
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That sends an important message to Moscow, who have for years discounted the US as a paper tiger.
—Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, 15 Apr. 2018
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Biden’s rivals are counting on the front-runner turning out to be a paper tiger, one whose aura of inevitability can be punctured with a loss in the opening primaries.
—Philip Elliott, Time, 20 Sep. 2019
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The result is a contentious, stalled mess, and the ESA, which wields the legal force of a thousand-pound gorilla, is ecologically about as effective as a paper tiger.
—Keith Kloor, Discover Magazine, 26 Apr. 2011
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Perhaps worst of all from Putin's standpoint, Russia's military has been revealed to be something of a paper tiger, scarier in theory than in practice.
—Joel Mathis, The Week, 21 Mar. 2022
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But at some point, talk without action threatens to recast the drive for judicial reform as a paper tiger, which might in turn embolden the right’s grand reactionary design.
—Simon Lazarus, The New Republic, 6 May 2021
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That acclaim transformed the practice from a paper tiger into a darling of institutional clients.
—Mark Lamster, Dallas News, 25 Feb. 2020
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Despite its posturing, the Trump campaign’s vaunted legal strategy appears to have been a paper tiger.
—Alex Shephard, The New Republic, 5 Nov. 2020
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The war also exposed Russia’s military as a paper tiger and led to unspeakable suffering in Ukraine and growing repression at home.
—Frida Ghitis, CNN, 6 Jan. 2023
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Today, Russia looks like a paper tiger, albeit a brutally destructive one.
—Frida Ghitis, CNN, 19 May 2022
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His decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, for example, raised the characterization of Trump as a paper tiger.
—Simon Denyer, Washington Post, 22 Dec. 2019
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Withholding donations for a quarter or a year is a paper tiger, especially if the PAC usually only gives to candidates in election years.
—David Yanofsky, Quartz, 15 Jan. 2021
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But because ambition is so overwhelming — because self-interest is so powerful — these paper tigers were allowed to prey on women year after year.
—David French, National Review, 8 Oct. 2017
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Colon merely has created a simplistic, and thus impotent, paper tiger here; the political and pedagogical force of her work would be far greater if her villain had at least a touch of complexity.
—Chris Jones, chicagotribune.com, 29 June 2018
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Rather than accepting the consequences of divided government and negotiating, some Democrats preferred to fantasize over an idea that would expose the United States as politically dysfunctional and a financial paper tiger.
—Isaac Schorr, National Review, 28 Sep. 2020
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'paper tiger.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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