poles apart

English

Pronunciation

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Adjective

poles apart (not comparable)

1. (idiomatic) Totally opposite.
   • 1935, George Goodchild, chapter 1, in Death on the Centre Court:

     She mixed furniture with the same fatal profligacy as she mixed drinks, and this outrageous contact between things which were intended by Nature to be kept poles apart gave her an inexpressible thrill.

   • 1960 February, R. C. Riley, “The London-Birmingham services - Past, Present and Future”, in Trains Illustrated, page 96:

     As regards distance there is little to choose between them and until the recent diversions there was a marked similarity in their train services; but the resemblance ends there and in character the two lines are poles apart.

   • 1993, Aryeh Kaplan, Yaakov Elman, Israel ben Gedaliah Lipschutz, Immortality, resurrection, and the age of the universe: a kabbalistic view‎^[1], page 31:

     In a purely spiritual sense, the two are poles apart and without the material could never be brought together in a single entity.

   • 2001, Karl Figlio, Psychoanalysis, science and masculinity‎^[2], page 213:

     At this level, science and magic are poles apart and yet they are the same.

   • 2009, November 29, Times of India, "Two cities, two lives"

     Two city living however has its own flipside, not the least the difficulty straddling the two different cultures of two cities that are poles apart.

Translations

totally opposite

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 完全相反 (wánquán xiāngfǎn), 天壤之別／天壤之别 (zh) (tiānrǎngzhībié), 截然不同 (zh) (jiéránbùtóng)

• Finnish: täysin vastakkainen
• Japanese: please add this translation if you can
• Polish: totalnie przeciwny
• Russian: please add this translation if you can
• Spanish: polos opuestos m pl