A proposal to levy a tax on cats and dogs that stunned Italy on Friday turned out to be all bark and no bite after a wave of popular anger saw it withdrawn on the same day it was made public.

My comments:

Dogs bark and bite. However, some dogs that bark the loudest are observed to be less tenacious than they appear to be – they bark but daren’t actually attack (bite).

Hence, appropriately this idiom is used here on a piece of legislative proposal on cats and dogs. It stunned Italy but turned out to be all bark and no bite – withdrawn on the same day it was made public.

In other words, all talk and no walk (action).

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Leave money on the table

Boots on the ground

Jailbreak

Boots on the ground

Common thread

A fact of life

Leave no stone unturned

Train wreck

Keep up with Joneses

Finishing touch

No great shakes

Warts and all

Catch -22 situation

Pull-up trey

I'm sold

Flip-flop

Sit on its hands

Casing the joint

Free rein

Bear the brunt of

Cross one’s path

Tribute projects

Off the beaten track

At the forefront of

Seat warmer

The rule of the jungle

On-the-go

On the fence

Wild guess

In the high teens

Touch up

Unforced error

Catch a break

City slicker

Political correctness

Gee up

Big mind

Blanket statement

Making knee-jerk changes is not in our DNA

Go to Zhang Xin's column

本文僅代表作者本人觀點，與本網立場無關。歡迎大家討論學術問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發布一切違反國家現行法律法規的內容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin（張欣） has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.