How to Use paper tiger in a Sentence

paper tiger

noun

• The new laws are just paper tigers without any method of enforcement.
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• These left-wing TV buffoons are just paper tigers staging a new version of their favorite hoax — a petulant insurrection.
  — Armond White, National Review, 29 Mar. 2024
• 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
• 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
• That acclaim transformed the practice from a paper tiger into a darling of institutional clients.
  — Mark Lamster, Dallas News, 25 Feb. 2020
• 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
• 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
• Today, Russia looks like a paper tiger, albeit a brutally destructive one.
  — Frida Ghitis, CNN, 19 May 2022
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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

Last Updated: 13 Dec 2024