paper airplane
n.— «The much-touted Boeing 7E7 Dreamliner is still just a paper airplane, but that’s likely to change soon.» —“Boeing officials report solid base of commitments to launch 7E7 Dreamliner” by Bob Cox Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Texas) July 21, 2004. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
The words tough, through, and dough all end in O-U-G-H. So why don’t they rhyme? A lively new book addresses the many quirks of English by explaining the history of words and phrases. And: have you ever been in a situation where a group makes...