Talk:Apples and oranges

message: 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)
thread_title: Non-natives have been messing with the article

message: 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)
replies: text: You make some good points.  Feel free to add a bit, preferably with sources (I don't want to give anyone an excuse to delete this article, and having law profs and NASA researchers hash this out is much funnier than if we were to do it ourselves).  Dave (talk) 21:48, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

text: What is obvious to one person is not obvious to another, surely? A quick reading of the article indicates that law professors and scientists are merely trying to bring their skills to bear on the issue - no matter how absurd that may sound, I see no harm in it. -moritheilTalk 01:11, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: General comments

message: 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"  - literally "Chinese apple". Soobrickay 00:56, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: are you going to tell me that left-handed people aren't sinister? :-P Dave (talk) 01:43, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Go Dutch 

message: 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)
replies: text: Great job!--ragesoss 16:48, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thanks 

message: Can anyone come up with the first use of this phrase? Crazekid 02:35, 9 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  First use 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Alleged British usage 

message: 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)
thread_title:  French 

message: An Argentinian idiom was recently added:
:In Argentina, a common question is "En qué se parecen el amor y elojo del hacha?" which translates into "What do love and axe eye have in common?" and emphasizes dissimilarity between two subjects.
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)
replies: text: I wonder if this is just a hoax. The phrase cannot be found in a Google search except about 5 or 10 hits that are talking about proverbs, and probably just got it from Wikipedia. Equinox ◑ 13:49, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Argentinian idiom 

message: Isn't the saying about shit and shinola similar as well? Steve (talk) 13:10, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: They are very different.  The saying about "not knowing shit from shinola" indicates symbolic confusion (usually due to unfamiliarity with the brand name shinola) whereas the saying about apples and oranges is about comparing the objects themselves.  -moritheilTalk 01:19, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another relevant idiom? 

message: 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)
replies: text: We should always prioritize environment above economy.
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)
thread_title:  Teaching finance, comparing expenses 

message: 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? ɹəəpıɔnı 09:14, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: A very good point, and as an earlier commenter stated above on this very page, "chalk and cheese" indicates complete fundamental dissimilarity, whereas "apples and oranges" indicates some broad similarities but also fundamental differences.  Someone should make a stub for "chalk and cheese."  -moritheilTalk 01:13, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There was an article on Chalk and cheese but editors decided to merge it into this article and make it a redirect. Then editors of this article cleaned it out as being too different. QuentinUK (talk) 02:58, 16 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chalk and cheese 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Fruit in season 

message: <<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)
replies: text: Okey. Let's see. In Greek the world for orange is indeed portokali. I cannot recall if chrysomelia (pron: chrisomilia) reffers specifically to to the appricot or which specific fruit but sounds familiar, I personally have not met the use of that term specifically for oranges or any other citrus sp. There is connection though but not with that word. The greek collective term for the genus Citrus and related Rutaceae plants with similar fruit(oranges, lemons, mandarin oranges, grape fruit, kum-kuats) is 'Εσπεριδοειδή (Esperidhoidhi) that could translate as 'Hesperoids' and the term reffers to the mythological "Μήλα των Εσπερίδων" (mila ton esperidhon) apples of Hesperides (plural for "Hesperis" or "Hesperida"), the golden apples that Hercules stole from the garden of Hesperides (after defeating the hundred-headed dragon Ladon). I'll make the links with the related articles.--Draco ignoramus sophomoricus (talk) 10:40, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Greek? Suspect absolute rubbish 

message: 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)
thread_title: I'm Surprised

message: 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)
replies: text: In Polish we ask what the gingerbread has to do with the windmill Striepan (talk) 11:54, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Serbia and Romanian analogies are straight otta Borat. 

message: 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)
replies: text: Interesting comment, though its aim is unclear. These articles appear to provide readers with explanatory content, and they succeed at that aim. (E.g., the variations of the expression, with their subtle differences, are intriguing and useful.) Is it your suggestion that this article is not useful or noteworthy? (Disagree.) Is it that further content making your point should be added? (Agree, but you fail to provide the necessary sourcing for others to make the edit; your "deconstructive" ideas as an editor, while also intriguing, are not fodder for content change.) Is there a source where this is argued?  Cheers.  71.239.87.100 (talk) 15:18, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: nonsensical nature of the expression

message: …because, as a bare URL and blog/forum posting, it is not reliable, authoritative secondary content, and so not acceptable as a source here:
*REF  "Apples-to-apples comparison"
The place where it was removed is indicated by a  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)
thread_title:  Blog reference moved here to talk 

message: …because, as a bare URL and blog/forum posting, it is not reliable, authoritative secondary content, and so not acceptable as a source here:
*REF  "Apples-to-apples comparison"
The place where it was removed is indicated by a  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)
thread_title:  Blog reference moved here to talk 

message: Added two references to the section In teaching the use of units. I propose removing the . Are there additional references needed? Any concerns about removing the warning template? - DutchTreat (talk) 21:24, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: unreferenced removed by  - DutchTreat (talk) 17:35, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  References Found for section ''In teaching the use of units''