English · Word pair Attested

apples and oranges

In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

Fundamentally different.

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

hoàn toàn khác biệt

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

Thus, in effect, ICI and GEC — and all UK companies which use historical cost money accounting — are adding and subtracting apples and oranges.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed on Wikipedia “Irreversible binomial” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29). Figurative class: Metaphor (PIE-English corpus, CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-31).

Topics: Food

Common questions

What does “apples and oranges” mean?

Fundamentally different.

Is “apples and oranges” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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