A recent Corner post quotes an e-mail that says that comparing Bush's and Churchill's rhetoric "is [comparing] apples and oranges," presumably meaning "comparing two things that can't properly be compared."
But (as I noted before), we compare apples and oranges all the time! We compare them by price, by how much we like the taste, by likely sweetness and ripeness, by how well they'll go in a tasty fruit cocktail, and so on. In fact, every time we go to the store and buy apples rather than oranges — or vice versa — we are necessarily (if implicitly) comparing apples and oranges. You too have compared apples and oranges, and have been quite right to do so.
Seems to me that the phrase should instead reflect two items that really are radically dissimilar — say, "comparing apples and democracy," or "comparing oranges and the multiplication table." Now those comparisons really would be hard to conduct.
UPDATE: Reader Q the Enchanter says he often uses "apples and orangutans."
Nonsense. We could compare them by their alphabetic ordering, or number of syllables, or number of synonyms, or the approximate age at which children learn the word or the concept, or the century at which the word passed into English, et cetera and so forth.
Is it silly to point out that changing the axis of measurement rescales differences? Er, yes.
Even comparing oranges and the multiplication table makes sense in an easily imagined context. Which was first used by humans, etc. There is no shortage of popular science or history books which make comparisons or draw connections between seemingly unconnected things. Guns, Germs, etc.
A more appropriate expression would be: judging apples by the standards of oranges. Or prize bulls. It would be ludicrous to find fault with an apple because its testicles werre found wanting.
There's a famous quote of uncertain attribution —"writing about music is like dancing about architecture." When I first read it at age 18 I thought it was hilarious and deeply true. I still think it's kind of funny, but the idea of dancing about architecture no longer seems ridiculous.
By the way, The Annals of Improbable Research did a scientific study on this, concluding that apples and oranges can, indeed, be compared. They do a lot of important work (which will annoy Bub because he probably wouldn't think it was "useful); they also had a report that demonstrated that Kansas is flatter than a pancake.
I definitely put you in the "sensible people" category. On a different day I would have lurked as usual. I guess today I'm not in my own plate.
Dave,
I'm proud to be an outlier.
I submit that "important work" is by definition "useful." If the group you cite does, in fact, do important work, then I'm sure it wouldn't annoy me. To be honest, I find it strange that you would suggest otherwise. Or is your point that I would find annoying a study showing Kansas is flatter than a pancake? If so, may I suggest that you make that part of your sentence the antecedent to your comment in parenthesis?
We could compare the word 'apples' with the phrase 'multiplication tables' by counting syllables or synonyms, but that's not comparing apples with multiplication tables. Apples aren't made out of syllables. They're made out of organic matter.
There are, of course, many ways to compare apples with multiplication tables. Apples are edible ruits, and multiplication tables aren't edible or fruit. Multiplication tables are abstract objects or visual representations thereof. Apples are physical objects. You can write out a multiplication table, but you have to wait until an apple grows on a tree or acquire one from someone who already has one after waiting for it to grow.
Sandford JA J Irrep Res 1995.