tiger mothers and other tiggers

[Paul Frank]

On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 10:39 AM, Randy Alexander
<strangeguitars at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 2:15 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>wrote:
>
>> And in the Vietnam era, there was what I assumed was a calque,
>> describing the U.S. as a "paper tiger".
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_tiger
>
> I believe it was made popular by Mao Zedong:
>
> http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-5/mswv5_52.htm
> --
> Randy Alexander

The OED has this: 1836    J. F. Davis Chinese II. xv. 163   A
blustering, harmless fellow they [sc. the Chinese] call ‘a paper
tiger’. Mao Zedong's favorite novel was the mid-16th century novel The
Water Margin (Shuihuzhuan), which contains the expression in chapter
25.

On Amy Chua's book, this is pretty funny (with English subtitles):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ0Qfn689ZA

Paul

Paul Frank
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