Paper Tiger

1. A person who appears knowledgeable on a certain topic, or even has a degree in a certain topic, but actually shows no ability and lacks some of the basic knowledge in said topic.

2. An idea that is still on paper and is having a hard time being made into reality

or

an idea that sounds amazing on paper but is completely extreme, unrealistic and/or will definitely not work in practice, and also likely hasn't come to fruition.

Worker A: What happened to that guy that was hired last week?
Worker B: He was fired a few days ago. Despite his master's degree, he was completely incompetent in his field. Turns out he was a paper tiger who just plagiarized other people for his degree.
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Person A: How's that project coming along?
Person B: It's a bit of a struggle, all I got right now is a paper tiger. I think I've almost figured out what went wrong, though.
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The Fontus self-filling water bottle is a a paper tiger that claims that it will fill itself in an hour, but can't possibly do so because of basic thermodynamics.

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