Paper Tiger: Difference between revisions

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Subtrope of [[More Than Meets the Eye]]. A character is not as tough as their physical appearance and/or personality suggests. Basically the opposite of [[Hidden Badass]].
 
[[Paper tigerTiger]] is a literal English translation of a Chinese phrase, meaning something that seems as threatening as a tiger, but is really harmless. This Chinese colloquialism is similar to the English phrase "its bark is worse than its bite".
 
The phrase is an ancient one in Chinese culture, but sources differ as to when it entered the English vocabulary. It is found translated to English as early as 1836, in a work by John Francis Davis.