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For example, a Spanish speaker has introduced the 'word' 'Variante' [sic, capitalised in mid-sentence), and a Slav (judging by the typical difficulty with the definite article) is talking about 'Czech language). Can someone PLEASE fix these absurdities and any others that may be found? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.68.94.86 ( talk) 15:06, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
This article is really funny, and I enjoyed reading it immensely. However, I don't think it gives the phrase a fair shake. When used properly, it really is a good analogy. The point is not that apples and oranges are completely dissimilar. Apples to apples implies comparing one apple with another apple of the same variety; with no fundamental differences, only particular differences are being compared; hence, you can find one apple in the pile to be simply better than another. Apples to oranges is for individual things that do have a lot of similarities, but that have some fundamental differences that prevent such a simple comparison. Like you could say comparing a blog and nytimes.com is comparing apples and oranges. They can be compared; both are websites, both may report on current events, etc. But because they have fundamental differences, it makes direct comparison less relevant than comparing, say, one blog to another or nytimes.com to washingtonpost.com. You can compare blogs (in general) to newpaper websites (in general); you can't say NYT is a worse blog than X (because it doesn't hyper-link to it's sources).
So when used properly, "apples to oranges" doesn't mean items are incomparable; it means they are instances of different classes of objects and so cannot be evaluated in precisely the same terms.
The use of plural in the phrase is what makes it confusing. When used properly, it means you can't evaluate the quality of a given orange (this is a good orange, this is a bad orange) by comparing it to an apple. A good orange is a bad apple, and vice versa.-- ragesoss 09:29, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
It is mind-boggling that professors and scientists fall into such an obvious error. Doops | talk 05:59, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
There's a film which has a line that goes something like this-" I wouldn't know the difference between a Mateus and a Matisse (in an art gallery) referring to a drink versus the artwork. So too, a dodgy sort of comparison can be used in a comedy such as in a Fawlty Towers episode, where there was a line mentioning a Chablis against a Claret or such. Signed JohnsonL623 ( talk) 11:23, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure about the legitimacy of deriving such conclusions from etymologies - take the word "sinister", for example - but who I am to stand in the way of a good article? Whilst I'm at it, the Dutch for orange is "sinaasappel" [1] - literally "Chinese apple". Soobrickay 00:56, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
A few words I was comparing ,apposite and opposite, then, abstruse and obtuse. Actually I should say compared and contrasted them,,, goes to show the value of the A&O idiom, that teachers etc. find useful. Signed JohnsonL623 ( talk) 10:55, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
I added the following:
Wikipedia is not a dictionnary, so we should not have similar idioms from lots of languages here. However, in connection with Volokh's criticism, I think the Danish one is relevant. I don't know whether I should include the full idiom in Danish, but here it is (if someone else wants to include it):
Word-by-word translation:
Does any other language have a similar idiom, not so easily criticized as the apples-and-oranges one?-- Niels Ø 10:16, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
When I started this article, I was sort of scared to put it on T:TDYK or WP:UA because I thought it would be good for it to have a low profile so it didn't get deleted by someone that would spoil my fun. User:Petaholmes convinced me to add it to DYK, and you all have been really helpful. This has turned out to be a really good article, thanks to changes added by y'all and other changes I wouldn't have thought of without your input. In a weird way, this offbeat article is Wikipedia at its best--collaboration making something none of us could have done alone. This is really cool. Thank you for your help. Dave (talk) 08:39, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Hi -- I've re-removed the "Criticisms of criticisms" section, because it is entirely original research. Maybe it makes valid points, but it cites no source to substantiate that these points have been made. I realize that some people think the "criticisms" are right. My personal opinion is that they are a bit over the top and don't really do much to clarify the meaning of the phrase and are kind of silly.
This is precisely why we have the "no original research" rule, so that we don't get into battles over this sort of thing. If the criticisms are valid, then someone must have made them somewhere other than wikipedia. So go out and find/cite them!
"No original research" is one of the five pillars and is very important when we work on much more hot-button issues where it is an important way to defuse flamewars on, e.g., political topics.
Sdedeo ( tips) 17:24, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Hi Doops -- the introduction does not make any points that are not made in sources later in the article. Meanwhile, the section that I removed makes points that are to be found nowhere else (AFAIK) in the sources, and that actively contradict them. This is explicitly a violation of WP:NOR, which states that "An edit counts as original research if it proposes ideas or arguments. That is: ... it introduces an argument, without citing a reputable source, which purports to refute or support another idea, theory, argument, or position."
Saying that the "sky is blue" is not OR in this sense, since I very much doubt it is ever being said to refute another theory; in general, I am not a nutcase about WP:CITE, which is a separate issue. WP:NOR just means that wikipedia doesn't "get involved" in debates -- it only reports on them.
I'll keep an eye out for sources. Meanwhile, since you seem to be strongly in favor of including this section, I encourage you to do so as well. As I've said, I think the section is actually silly and wrong, which is why I'm being a bit hardline about NOR here. Sdedeo ( tips) 17:45, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
I think your rewrite is great and solves all the problems I believed existed earlier. Sdedeo ( tips) 18:24, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Sure. The original section claimed, among other things, that the criticisms were based on a "misunderstanding" of the idiom. I think this is incorrect. Volokh, and others, are certaintly entirely aware of what the idiom means and how to use it correctly; they are simply having a little tongue-in-cheek fun with words. It's important to remember that it is, indeed, an idiom -- i.e., its literal meaning is not the question. Idioms may have begun at some point by asserting a literal fact, but by the time they are in fact idioms, those things are lost in the mists of time.
The section claimed to know the "true" literal meaning of the idiom (and I believe the asserted "true" meaning is incorrect -- what it originally arose from is probably some weird historical quirk and a matter for etymologists), and it claimed that knowing this true meaning allowed one to better understand the idiom and "reject" criticisms of it (which is silly -- nobody is seriously saying that using the idiom as a shorthand for describing someone as comparing incomparables is wrong.) Sdedeo ( tips) 18:55, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Definitely high amounts of caution are important in dealing with etymology, there are so many pitfalls and in the absence of a source, it's bad to speculate. Saying that an etymology X is "possible" in the absence of sources is thus a dangerous thing to do; it may, in fact, be impossible given the prior development of the phrase. "Suggesting" argument X is, for the purposes of WP:NOR, the same as arguing X.
Again, you miss the important point that this is an idiom -- i.e., the literal meaning has no bearing on the actual meaning. "Bringing coals to Newcastle" is unaffected by the strong possbility that Newcastle is no longer a net exporter of coal.
Droops, I think you are kind of flipping out over something rather silly. All of the "criticisms" here are jokes! The joke is that they are doing a laborious analysis of the literal meaning of an idiom! It's like someone making a video documentary on homemade mayo to demonstrate that at no point is there any "scratching". I don't think there's any need for Volokh or whoever to feel "ashamed", except for possiblity beating a rather annoyingly dead horse.
Sdedeo ( tips) 20:05, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
My guess is that Volokh does find the idiom kind of annoying and doesn't want to use it. In any case, contending that the idiom isn't "stupid" is definitely a matter of opinion, and thus needs to be sourced. It's really impossible to get a self-evident (i.e., WP:NOR exempt) argument for or against it going. If you want to point out that the criticisms are doubly silly because idioms don't depend on their literal meaning, go ahead (I just assumed it was implicit.) Sdedeo ( tips) 20:37, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone come up with the first use of this phrase? Crazekid 02:35, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
The article states: ‘In British English, the phrase chalk and cheese means the same thing as apples and oranges.’ This is not true, as far as I am aware (as a native speaker of British English). We don’t often actually use the expression ‘apples and oranges’ as such – but we do use expressions such as: ‘that’s like comparing apples with oranges’ (to stress that one should compare like with like). To say that two things are ‘like chalk and cheese’ or ‘as different as chalk and cheese’, on the other hand, is to say that they are fundamentally opposite, having little or nothing in common. As far as I’m aware, there is no overlap between the contexts in which the two phrases would be used.
Axnicho 18:23, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Agree. This is a complete misunderstanding of the phrase 'chalk and cheese'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.68.94.86 ( talk) 15:11, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
A minor point: the Latin "pomum" is sometimes translated as "apple", but it actually refers to any fruit. The word for the apple specifically is "malum" (although this, too, can refer to some other fruits).
mélanger les torchons et les serviettes (to mix the dusting cloths with the napkins). According to my Robert-Collins Fr-En dictionary, "il ne faut pas mélanger les torchons et les serviettes": we must separate the sheep from the goats.
Jerome Potts 06:21, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
In French, you can also say comparer des choux et des carottes, while mélanger les torchons et les serviettes introduces a judgment about superiority of serviettes compared to torchons.
-- 93.5.227.49 ( talk) 10:00, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
An Argentinian idiom was recently added:
In the translation, what does "axe eye" mean? Is it the whole in an axe head where the shaft passes through, or what? Does it need clarification? Should it be "an axe eye", perhaps "the eye of an axe head"? I'm not a native English speaker; perhaps it's just me having problems with this.-- Niels Ø (noe) 08:46, 14 March 2007 (UTC) No, you're not the only one who that confuses. I am a native speaker, and have never heard the phrase "axe eye" before. Probably, the translation needs improvement. 2600:6C44:237F:ACCB:2C47:395C:2ED:C0C5 ( talk) 19:03, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
Isn't the saying about shit and shinola similar as well? Steve ( talk) 13:10, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
The new section on teaching finance looks nice; the Celemi homepage seems to confirm it. Still, it's hard to tell if this is really a commercial edit; an independent source would be good.-- Noe ( talk) 08:08, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
I have often wondered at the lack of understanding displayed by people making statements like:
Whlie I'm perhaps more environmentally concerned than most, it's just rubbish. I strongly disagree with what seems to be the hidden agenda of Bjørn Lomborg when he ends up concluding we shouldn't spend money on preventing global warming - or perhaps I just disagree with his premise that we should trust technology to solve all problems that are still some years in the future. But he is right in pointing out that we need to compare apples and oranges (not a direct quote!!!) to make sound decisions about where to spend our money.
Does this have anything to do with our article? Only if someone finds a source connecting them, I'm afraid.-- Noe ( talk) 08:08, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
While I understand that "chalk and cheese" may have the same or similar meaning or usage as "apples and oranges" and that it is mentioned briefly in this article, given the fact that about 90% of the article very specifically talks about apples and oranges, and not comparison idioms in general, should "chalk and cheese" really redirect here? ɹəə pıɔnı 09:14, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
Ye olde apples and oranges could not be compared because they came into season at different times of the year. They did not exist at the same time of the year to make a comparison in spite of whatever similarities or dissimilarities. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Happykite ( talk • contribs) 13:01, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
<<In many languages, oranges are, implicitly or explicitly, referred to as a type of apple, specifically a "golden apple" or a "Chinese apple". For example, the Greek χρυσομηλιά (chrysomelia) >> Can someone who knows Greek confirm this because I have a suspicion that the Greek word Xrusomhlia means Apricot, and that the only Greek word for orange is Portokali Eugene-elgato ( talk) 11:03, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
The second link (which is of encyclopedic content) states that:
"Δεν υπάρχουν πληροφορίες πως οι αρχαίοι Έλληνες ήξεραν τα εσπεριδοειδή. Τα γνώριζαν ίσως μόνο όσοι ταξίδευαν σε μακρινούς τόπους και ο μύθος των Εσπερίδων φαίνεται πως συμβολίζει την επιθυμία των Ελλήνων ν' αποκτήσουν τους γλυκόχυμους και νόστιμους αυτούς καρπούς, που καλλιεργούνταν στην Ασία."
I'll try to translate as accurately as I can: "There is no information about how did the Ancient Greeks know about Hesperidoidi. Maybe there were only known to those who journeyed to distant places and the myth of the Hesperides seems that symbolizes the desire of Greeks to gain the sweetjuices (glikochimous - γλυκοχυμούς) and those tasty fruits, that had been cultivated in Asia.
I know the translation sounds a bit silly and not appealing as encyclopedic content but was word-to-word and I tried to leave the series of the content unchanged.
-- Draco ignoramus sophomoricus ( talk) 08:42, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
I always thought the idiom meant along the lines "While Similar, huge difference between the two , thus apples and oranges" Like for example let's say you are talking about executions of a fighting techniques, however someone responds to you about the pose of the fighting technique. It would be apples and oranges because while execution of the technique, would be similar to the pose of the fighting technique, it's still different because the execution would be something like Punching Hard to Punching soft, while the Pose has no additional effect to the technique other than in appearance. They're similar because they both deal with appearances but one is purely aesthetic while the other has additional properties beyond appearance. The same with apples and oranges, they look similar, they're both round (to a point), they're both fruits, they both grow on trees, and yet they are different fruits altogether. That's what I thought "Apples and Oranges" meant. If I'm thinking of a different Idiom, I would like to know what it is. If that is what "apples and oranges" means then why the criticism of the idiom? -- 174.19.230.53 ( talk) 16:52, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
Keenshwee! Yes! I think that the Serbian analogy for A&O (comparing grandmothers and toads) and the Romanian analogy (the cow and the longjohns) are fake as hell! They seem like some crap that Sasha Baron-Cohen wrote. Does these be for reals??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.206.138.33 ( talk) 14:33, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
You can, of course, compare apples with oranges. Both are types of fruit but they differ so they can be compared. It's difficult, but not impossible, to compare apples with the planet Jupiter. It's much harder to compare apples with gravity, and pretty well impossible to compare them with justice. The phrase thus conveys a meaning, less by what it signifies than by what it's thought to signify. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.189.103.145 ( talk) 17:46, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
…because, as a bare URL and blog/forum posting, it is not reliable, authoritative secondary content, and so not acceptable as a source here:
The place where it was removed is indicated by a citation needed tag. Because this was the only source in the entire section, the "refimprove" section tag was changed to "unreferenced". 71.239.87.100 ( talk) 15:15, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
…because, as a bare URL and blog/forum posting, it is not reliable, authoritative secondary content, and so not acceptable as a source here:
The place where it was removed is indicated by a citation needed tag. Because this was the only source in the entire section, the "refimprove" section tag was changed to "unreferenced". 71.239.87.100 ( talk) 15:26, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
Added two references to the section In teaching the use of units. I propose removing the {{ unreferenced-section}}. Are there additional references needed? Any concerns about removing the warning template? - DutchTreat ( talk) 21:24, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
Apples and oranges received a peer review by Wikipedia editors, which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article. |
Apples and oranges was featured in a WikiWorld cartoon. Click the image to the right for full size version. |
A fact from Apples and oranges appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the
Did you know column on 3 January 2006. The text of the entry was as follows:
|
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||
|
For example, a Spanish speaker has introduced the 'word' 'Variante' [sic, capitalised in mid-sentence), and a Slav (judging by the typical difficulty with the definite article) is talking about 'Czech language). Can someone PLEASE fix these absurdities and any others that may be found? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.68.94.86 ( talk) 15:06, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
This article is really funny, and I enjoyed reading it immensely. However, I don't think it gives the phrase a fair shake. When used properly, it really is a good analogy. The point is not that apples and oranges are completely dissimilar. Apples to apples implies comparing one apple with another apple of the same variety; with no fundamental differences, only particular differences are being compared; hence, you can find one apple in the pile to be simply better than another. Apples to oranges is for individual things that do have a lot of similarities, but that have some fundamental differences that prevent such a simple comparison. Like you could say comparing a blog and nytimes.com is comparing apples and oranges. They can be compared; both are websites, both may report on current events, etc. But because they have fundamental differences, it makes direct comparison less relevant than comparing, say, one blog to another or nytimes.com to washingtonpost.com. You can compare blogs (in general) to newpaper websites (in general); you can't say NYT is a worse blog than X (because it doesn't hyper-link to it's sources).
So when used properly, "apples to oranges" doesn't mean items are incomparable; it means they are instances of different classes of objects and so cannot be evaluated in precisely the same terms.
The use of plural in the phrase is what makes it confusing. When used properly, it means you can't evaluate the quality of a given orange (this is a good orange, this is a bad orange) by comparing it to an apple. A good orange is a bad apple, and vice versa.-- ragesoss 09:29, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
It is mind-boggling that professors and scientists fall into such an obvious error. Doops | talk 05:59, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
There's a film which has a line that goes something like this-" I wouldn't know the difference between a Mateus and a Matisse (in an art gallery) referring to a drink versus the artwork. So too, a dodgy sort of comparison can be used in a comedy such as in a Fawlty Towers episode, where there was a line mentioning a Chablis against a Claret or such. Signed JohnsonL623 ( talk) 11:23, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure about the legitimacy of deriving such conclusions from etymologies - take the word "sinister", for example - but who I am to stand in the way of a good article? Whilst I'm at it, the Dutch for orange is "sinaasappel" [1] - literally "Chinese apple". Soobrickay 00:56, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
A few words I was comparing ,apposite and opposite, then, abstruse and obtuse. Actually I should say compared and contrasted them,,, goes to show the value of the A&O idiom, that teachers etc. find useful. Signed JohnsonL623 ( talk) 10:55, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
I added the following:
Wikipedia is not a dictionnary, so we should not have similar idioms from lots of languages here. However, in connection with Volokh's criticism, I think the Danish one is relevant. I don't know whether I should include the full idiom in Danish, but here it is (if someone else wants to include it):
Word-by-word translation:
Does any other language have a similar idiom, not so easily criticized as the apples-and-oranges one?-- Niels Ø 10:16, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
When I started this article, I was sort of scared to put it on T:TDYK or WP:UA because I thought it would be good for it to have a low profile so it didn't get deleted by someone that would spoil my fun. User:Petaholmes convinced me to add it to DYK, and you all have been really helpful. This has turned out to be a really good article, thanks to changes added by y'all and other changes I wouldn't have thought of without your input. In a weird way, this offbeat article is Wikipedia at its best--collaboration making something none of us could have done alone. This is really cool. Thank you for your help. Dave (talk) 08:39, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Hi -- I've re-removed the "Criticisms of criticisms" section, because it is entirely original research. Maybe it makes valid points, but it cites no source to substantiate that these points have been made. I realize that some people think the "criticisms" are right. My personal opinion is that they are a bit over the top and don't really do much to clarify the meaning of the phrase and are kind of silly.
This is precisely why we have the "no original research" rule, so that we don't get into battles over this sort of thing. If the criticisms are valid, then someone must have made them somewhere other than wikipedia. So go out and find/cite them!
"No original research" is one of the five pillars and is very important when we work on much more hot-button issues where it is an important way to defuse flamewars on, e.g., political topics.
Sdedeo ( tips) 17:24, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Hi Doops -- the introduction does not make any points that are not made in sources later in the article. Meanwhile, the section that I removed makes points that are to be found nowhere else (AFAIK) in the sources, and that actively contradict them. This is explicitly a violation of WP:NOR, which states that "An edit counts as original research if it proposes ideas or arguments. That is: ... it introduces an argument, without citing a reputable source, which purports to refute or support another idea, theory, argument, or position."
Saying that the "sky is blue" is not OR in this sense, since I very much doubt it is ever being said to refute another theory; in general, I am not a nutcase about WP:CITE, which is a separate issue. WP:NOR just means that wikipedia doesn't "get involved" in debates -- it only reports on them.
I'll keep an eye out for sources. Meanwhile, since you seem to be strongly in favor of including this section, I encourage you to do so as well. As I've said, I think the section is actually silly and wrong, which is why I'm being a bit hardline about NOR here. Sdedeo ( tips) 17:45, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
I think your rewrite is great and solves all the problems I believed existed earlier. Sdedeo ( tips) 18:24, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Sure. The original section claimed, among other things, that the criticisms were based on a "misunderstanding" of the idiom. I think this is incorrect. Volokh, and others, are certaintly entirely aware of what the idiom means and how to use it correctly; they are simply having a little tongue-in-cheek fun with words. It's important to remember that it is, indeed, an idiom -- i.e., its literal meaning is not the question. Idioms may have begun at some point by asserting a literal fact, but by the time they are in fact idioms, those things are lost in the mists of time.
The section claimed to know the "true" literal meaning of the idiom (and I believe the asserted "true" meaning is incorrect -- what it originally arose from is probably some weird historical quirk and a matter for etymologists), and it claimed that knowing this true meaning allowed one to better understand the idiom and "reject" criticisms of it (which is silly -- nobody is seriously saying that using the idiom as a shorthand for describing someone as comparing incomparables is wrong.) Sdedeo ( tips) 18:55, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Definitely high amounts of caution are important in dealing with etymology, there are so many pitfalls and in the absence of a source, it's bad to speculate. Saying that an etymology X is "possible" in the absence of sources is thus a dangerous thing to do; it may, in fact, be impossible given the prior development of the phrase. "Suggesting" argument X is, for the purposes of WP:NOR, the same as arguing X.
Again, you miss the important point that this is an idiom -- i.e., the literal meaning has no bearing on the actual meaning. "Bringing coals to Newcastle" is unaffected by the strong possbility that Newcastle is no longer a net exporter of coal.
Droops, I think you are kind of flipping out over something rather silly. All of the "criticisms" here are jokes! The joke is that they are doing a laborious analysis of the literal meaning of an idiom! It's like someone making a video documentary on homemade mayo to demonstrate that at no point is there any "scratching". I don't think there's any need for Volokh or whoever to feel "ashamed", except for possiblity beating a rather annoyingly dead horse.
Sdedeo ( tips) 20:05, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
My guess is that Volokh does find the idiom kind of annoying and doesn't want to use it. In any case, contending that the idiom isn't "stupid" is definitely a matter of opinion, and thus needs to be sourced. It's really impossible to get a self-evident (i.e., WP:NOR exempt) argument for or against it going. If you want to point out that the criticisms are doubly silly because idioms don't depend on their literal meaning, go ahead (I just assumed it was implicit.) Sdedeo ( tips) 20:37, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone come up with the first use of this phrase? Crazekid 02:35, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
The article states: ‘In British English, the phrase chalk and cheese means the same thing as apples and oranges.’ This is not true, as far as I am aware (as a native speaker of British English). We don’t often actually use the expression ‘apples and oranges’ as such – but we do use expressions such as: ‘that’s like comparing apples with oranges’ (to stress that one should compare like with like). To say that two things are ‘like chalk and cheese’ or ‘as different as chalk and cheese’, on the other hand, is to say that they are fundamentally opposite, having little or nothing in common. As far as I’m aware, there is no overlap between the contexts in which the two phrases would be used.
Axnicho 18:23, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Agree. This is a complete misunderstanding of the phrase 'chalk and cheese'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.68.94.86 ( talk) 15:11, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
A minor point: the Latin "pomum" is sometimes translated as "apple", but it actually refers to any fruit. The word for the apple specifically is "malum" (although this, too, can refer to some other fruits).
mélanger les torchons et les serviettes (to mix the dusting cloths with the napkins). According to my Robert-Collins Fr-En dictionary, "il ne faut pas mélanger les torchons et les serviettes": we must separate the sheep from the goats.
Jerome Potts 06:21, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
In French, you can also say comparer des choux et des carottes, while mélanger les torchons et les serviettes introduces a judgment about superiority of serviettes compared to torchons.
-- 93.5.227.49 ( talk) 10:00, 28 October 2009 (UTC)
An Argentinian idiom was recently added:
In the translation, what does "axe eye" mean? Is it the whole in an axe head where the shaft passes through, or what? Does it need clarification? Should it be "an axe eye", perhaps "the eye of an axe head"? I'm not a native English speaker; perhaps it's just me having problems with this.-- Niels Ø (noe) 08:46, 14 March 2007 (UTC) No, you're not the only one who that confuses. I am a native speaker, and have never heard the phrase "axe eye" before. Probably, the translation needs improvement. 2600:6C44:237F:ACCB:2C47:395C:2ED:C0C5 ( talk) 19:03, 15 March 2021 (UTC)
Isn't the saying about shit and shinola similar as well? Steve ( talk) 13:10, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
The new section on teaching finance looks nice; the Celemi homepage seems to confirm it. Still, it's hard to tell if this is really a commercial edit; an independent source would be good.-- Noe ( talk) 08:08, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
I have often wondered at the lack of understanding displayed by people making statements like:
Whlie I'm perhaps more environmentally concerned than most, it's just rubbish. I strongly disagree with what seems to be the hidden agenda of Bjørn Lomborg when he ends up concluding we shouldn't spend money on preventing global warming - or perhaps I just disagree with his premise that we should trust technology to solve all problems that are still some years in the future. But he is right in pointing out that we need to compare apples and oranges (not a direct quote!!!) to make sound decisions about where to spend our money.
Does this have anything to do with our article? Only if someone finds a source connecting them, I'm afraid.-- Noe ( talk) 08:08, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
While I understand that "chalk and cheese" may have the same or similar meaning or usage as "apples and oranges" and that it is mentioned briefly in this article, given the fact that about 90% of the article very specifically talks about apples and oranges, and not comparison idioms in general, should "chalk and cheese" really redirect here? ɹəə pıɔnı 09:14, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
Ye olde apples and oranges could not be compared because they came into season at different times of the year. They did not exist at the same time of the year to make a comparison in spite of whatever similarities or dissimilarities. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Happykite ( talk • contribs) 13:01, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
<<In many languages, oranges are, implicitly or explicitly, referred to as a type of apple, specifically a "golden apple" or a "Chinese apple". For example, the Greek χρυσομηλιά (chrysomelia) >> Can someone who knows Greek confirm this because I have a suspicion that the Greek word Xrusomhlia means Apricot, and that the only Greek word for orange is Portokali Eugene-elgato ( talk) 11:03, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
The second link (which is of encyclopedic content) states that:
"Δεν υπάρχουν πληροφορίες πως οι αρχαίοι Έλληνες ήξεραν τα εσπεριδοειδή. Τα γνώριζαν ίσως μόνο όσοι ταξίδευαν σε μακρινούς τόπους και ο μύθος των Εσπερίδων φαίνεται πως συμβολίζει την επιθυμία των Ελλήνων ν' αποκτήσουν τους γλυκόχυμους και νόστιμους αυτούς καρπούς, που καλλιεργούνταν στην Ασία."
I'll try to translate as accurately as I can: "There is no information about how did the Ancient Greeks know about Hesperidoidi. Maybe there were only known to those who journeyed to distant places and the myth of the Hesperides seems that symbolizes the desire of Greeks to gain the sweetjuices (glikochimous - γλυκοχυμούς) and those tasty fruits, that had been cultivated in Asia.
I know the translation sounds a bit silly and not appealing as encyclopedic content but was word-to-word and I tried to leave the series of the content unchanged.
-- Draco ignoramus sophomoricus ( talk) 08:42, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
I always thought the idiom meant along the lines "While Similar, huge difference between the two , thus apples and oranges" Like for example let's say you are talking about executions of a fighting techniques, however someone responds to you about the pose of the fighting technique. It would be apples and oranges because while execution of the technique, would be similar to the pose of the fighting technique, it's still different because the execution would be something like Punching Hard to Punching soft, while the Pose has no additional effect to the technique other than in appearance. They're similar because they both deal with appearances but one is purely aesthetic while the other has additional properties beyond appearance. The same with apples and oranges, they look similar, they're both round (to a point), they're both fruits, they both grow on trees, and yet they are different fruits altogether. That's what I thought "Apples and Oranges" meant. If I'm thinking of a different Idiom, I would like to know what it is. If that is what "apples and oranges" means then why the criticism of the idiom? -- 174.19.230.53 ( talk) 16:52, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
Keenshwee! Yes! I think that the Serbian analogy for A&O (comparing grandmothers and toads) and the Romanian analogy (the cow and the longjohns) are fake as hell! They seem like some crap that Sasha Baron-Cohen wrote. Does these be for reals??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.206.138.33 ( talk) 14:33, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
You can, of course, compare apples with oranges. Both are types of fruit but they differ so they can be compared. It's difficult, but not impossible, to compare apples with the planet Jupiter. It's much harder to compare apples with gravity, and pretty well impossible to compare them with justice. The phrase thus conveys a meaning, less by what it signifies than by what it's thought to signify. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.189.103.145 ( talk) 17:46, 3 December 2011 (UTC)
…because, as a bare URL and blog/forum posting, it is not reliable, authoritative secondary content, and so not acceptable as a source here:
The place where it was removed is indicated by a citation needed tag. Because this was the only source in the entire section, the "refimprove" section tag was changed to "unreferenced". 71.239.87.100 ( talk) 15:15, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
…because, as a bare URL and blog/forum posting, it is not reliable, authoritative secondary content, and so not acceptable as a source here:
The place where it was removed is indicated by a citation needed tag. Because this was the only source in the entire section, the "refimprove" section tag was changed to "unreferenced". 71.239.87.100 ( talk) 15:26, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
Added two references to the section In teaching the use of units. I propose removing the {{ unreferenced-section}}. Are there additional references needed? Any concerns about removing the warning template? - DutchTreat ( talk) 21:24, 5 January 2021 (UTC)