fall between two stools
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Fail by trying to do two things that are incompatible
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
Thất bại khi cố làm hai việc không tương thích
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: fall between two stools
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
The text seems dully at variance with the fantasy of the illustrations and falls between two stools.
That was a bad time for her because she fell between two stools in a way.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “fall between two stools” mean?
Fail by trying to do two things that are incompatible Literally: fall between two stools
Is “fall between two stools” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.