never the twain shall meet
Irreconcilably separate always
Never the twain shall meet describes two things so fundamentally different they cannot be reconciled or brought together.
The phrase comes from Kipling's poem about East and West, but now applies to any incompatible pairing: With her love of order and his chaos, never the twain shall meet.
Twain is an archaic word for two.
- dichotomyDivision into contrasting parts
- polar oppositesMaximally opposed counterparts
- partitionBarrier separating spaces
- irreconcilabilityImpossibility of agreement
- irreconcilable differencesConflicts that cannot harmonize
mismatch · polarity · gulf · disharmony · contradiction · segregation · antithesis · chalk and cheese · divergence · worlds apart · parallel lines · unbridgeable · paradox · juxtaposition · mutual exclusion · opposite ends · discordance · Kipling
never the twain shall meettwo peas in a pod
birds of a feather · made for each other · hand in glove · cut from the same cloth · kindred spirits
never the twain shall meetreunion
Gathering after separation
convergence · reconciliation · coming together · meeting of minds · finding common ground