poles apart en · ADJ
Pronunciation
- (Australia) audio
Meanings
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(idiomatic, not-comparable) Totally opposite.
At this level, science and magic are poles apart and yet they are the same.
2001, Karl Figlio, Psychoanalysis, science and masculinity, page 213: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.
1960 February, R. C. Riley, “The London-Birmingham services - Past, Present and Future”, in Trains Illustrated, page 96:2009, 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.
In a purely spiritual sense, the two are poles apart and without the material could never be brought together in a single entity.
1993, Aryeh Kaplan, Yaakov Elman, Israel ben Gedaliah Lipschutz, Immortality, resurrection, and the age of the universe: a kabbalistic view, page 31: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.
1935, George Goodchild, chapter 1, in Death on the Centre Court:
Synonyms
Translations (7)
es polos opuestos (totally opposite) · pl totalnie przeciwny (totally opposite) · fi täysin vastakkainen (totally opposite) · cmn 天壤之別 /天壤之别 (totally opposite) · cmn 完全相反 (totally opposite) · cmn 大相徑庭 /大相径庭 (totally opposite) · cmn 截然不同 (totally opposite)