paper [ME] The words paper and papyrus are both from Greek papuros. Paper passed through Latin papyrus and Anglo-Norman papir, while papyrus was taken directly from Latin, appearing as the name of the reed in Middle English, but only in the 18th century as the material that the ancient Egyptians prepared from the pithy stems of the plant.

We have the German statesman Otto von Bismarck (1815–98) to thank for paper over the cracks, ‘to disguise a problem rather than try to resolve it’. Bismarck used the German equivalent in a letter written in 1865, referring to a convention between Austria and Prussia. Tension had been rising since their combined victory over Denmark in the previous year had given control of Schleswig to Austria and of Holstein to Prussia, but neither was quite ready to go to war. The convention gave a semblance of order to the situation, while in fact giving time for both to make preparations for an inevitable conflict. Paper tiger for a person or thing that appears threatening but is ineffectual is a Chinese expression first found in an English translation in 1836. It came to wider attention through a 1946 interview with the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong, in which he expressed the view that ‘all reactionaries are paper tigers’.