never the twain shall meet
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Two things are incompatible and will never come together.
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
Hai điều không tương thích và sẽ không bao giờ gặp nhau
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: never the two groups will meet
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Inside a packed - to - capacity press box, national passions were running high Scottish press corps to the right, English press to the left, and never the twain shall meet.
I don't suppose these incentives made a deal of difference to the attendance as families were either ‘ church’ or ‘ chapel’and never the twain shall meet.
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 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “never the twain shall meet” mean?
Two things are incompatible and will never come together. Literally: never the two groups will meet
Is “never the twain shall meet” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.