Apples & Orangutans

Friends of mine have heard this pet peeve of mine before, but I've shockingly had nothing to kvetch about the past week or so, and I recently heard this expression again somewhere out there in the ether. So here we go.

I hate the expression "apples and oranges." As in, "You can't compare the two. It's like apples and oranges."

Why does this bother me so? Well, simply put, the expression makes no sense. If ever there were two things you could absolutely make a comparison between, it's an apple and an orange. They're both fruits. They're both round. They're roughly the same size. In fact, they are extremely similar to each other. If I were to ask you to list your top five favorite fruits and then discuss the differences between them, there's a very good chance you'd be giving me an answer in which you'd be comparing an apple to an orange. You might also be comparing a watermelon to a banana. Or a kiwi to a plumquat. All totally appropriate things to compare to each other.

My point is, apples and oranges are in fact so similar, so very comparable, that to use the expression "it's like apples and oranges" when indicating that two entities are so dissimilar that they can't even be put in the same discussion, is ludicrous and makes whoever uses this trite cliche sound like an idiot.

Thus, I propose a new expression, something that pits two things against each other between which no logical comparison could ever be made. There are loads of possibilities; just pick out almost any two items you see. Clouds and stethoscopes. Milk and harmonicas. Cell phones and nipples. All those are examples of pairs of things that would be difficult, if not downright ridiculous, to compare to each other. At the very least, they make a thousand times more sense than using apples and oranges to illustrate your point.

But maybe my new saying would catch on faster if it incorporated part of the old one. So we'll keep apples in there. But instead of oranges, how about "orangutans"? Orangutans also starts with "O" - in fact, it actually uses most of the word "orange" (except the E on the end) - so you still have the same kind of alliteration as you did with oranges. Plus, everybody loves monkeys. And, most importantly, there are very few similarities between apples and orangutans.

So remember this new and improved colloquialism next time you say something like "You can't compare Saved By the Bell to Mad Men...it's like apples and orangutans!"

I'm really hoping this catches on.