paper tiger is a noun meaning "the nature of a person or organization that appears powerful but is actually powerless and ineffectual". It carries one recorded sense.
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”
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for paper tiger come from Princeton University’s WordNet. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.