never the twain shall meet

English

Etymology

Coined by the English author and poet Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) in his poem The Ballad of East and West (1889).[1]

Phrase

never the twain shall meet

  1. (idiomatic) Used to emphasize that two subjects are so different that they cannot coexist or agree with each other.
    • 1981 December 27, Charles Bonnell, “Throwing In The Towel”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 23, page 5:
      In Silverstein's terms, Frank is an "excitement seeker" and the lover is a "home builder." Never the twain shall meet. Again, for a while I saw the conflict between the two in the movie as a refreshing examination of a problem many gay couples (of both sexes) face. But […]

See also

References

  1. ^ See Rudyard Kipling (1889) “The Ballad of East and West”, in Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses, 3rd edition, London: Methuen & Co. […], published 1892, →OCLC: “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, / Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat; […]”
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.