Idiom
never the twain shall meet
Meaning
Used to emphasize that two subjects are so different that they cannot coexist or agree with each other.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“Their opinions are so different that never the twain shall meet.”
“The two political parties have such opposing views on the budget that it seems never the twain shall meet.”
“Despite their shared history, the two scholars held such fundamentally incompatible philosophies that it was clear never the twain shall meet in their academic conclusions.”
Examples
simple
“Their opinions are so different that never the twain shall meet.”
contextual
“The two political parties have such opposing views on the budget that it seems never the twain shall meet.”
complex
“Despite their shared history, the two scholars held such fundamentally incompatible philosophies that it was clear never the twain shall meet in their academic conclusions.”
Origin
Coined by the English author and poet Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) in his poem The Ballad of East and West (1889).
Key words
Related idioms
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