simile suggestions for "as inextricale/inseparable as" or
June 9, 2018 4:00 AM   Subscribe

My brain needs help. I know I've heard a good analogy for expressing that separating one thing for another would be like (i.e., as difficult as) separating [X] from [Y]. But I'm wracking my brain and I can't fill in the blanks for X and Y. I'm looking for something that would be instantly obvious how impossible it would be to extract one thing from another after they're mixed. Any ideas?
posted by leticia to Writing & Language (16 answers total)
 
...yolks from scrambled eggs? 8-)
posted by idlethink at 4:36 AM on June 9, 2018 [1 favorite]


You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy.

Toast can't never be bread again.
posted by Phssthpok at 4:44 AM on June 9, 2018


White on rice?
posted by mahorn at 5:06 AM on June 9, 2018 [1 favorite]


Milk and honey
Sugar and spice
Stripes and tigers
Black and asphalt
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:27 AM on June 9, 2018


It's not an "as X as Y" type simile, but I always liked the one about "unbaking a cake" – you can do all sorts of tests and analyses on a cake to figure out what it was made of, but there's no way you're ever going to get a handful of eggs and a load of flour and sugar back.

I think I've heard this used to compare source code vs compiled software, but it's a very immediate and tangible analogy that could work for other things I think.
posted by Ted Maul at 5:37 AM on June 9, 2018 [3 favorites]


I remember once being asked to take the milk out of a cup of tea, as it was put in by mistake. No deal, kiddo, no deal.
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 5:39 AM on June 9, 2018 [4 favorites]


From Tom Stoppard's Arcadia:
Thomasina: When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backward, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before.
posted by nalyd at 5:52 AM on June 9, 2018 [2 favorites]


Salt from the ocean
Butter from pie dough
posted by spindrifter at 6:01 AM on June 9, 2018 [1 favorite]


There's Ferdinand de Saussure's description of the relationship between language and thought--as inseparable as the recto and verso of a piece of paper.
posted by Morpeth at 6:33 AM on June 9, 2018 [1 favorite]


Sugar and salt? My first thought was sugar and sand, but you could dissolve the sugar out, in theory.
posted by MadamM at 8:24 AM on June 9, 2018


A simile from physics would be apt, especially since you specified "after they're mixed", e.g., the arrow of time. "Entropy increases as the ice melts into the warm water; that's a process that can happen but will never un-happen." (Sean Carroll)
posted by methroach at 10:13 AM on June 9, 2018


Red from pink
Some past event from world/national/personal history
posted by trig at 11:17 AM on June 9, 2018


In ''A Separate Peace'' by John Knowles, the author uses similes and ... It's hard to tell who is on your side because in reality, it's every man for himself. × ...

A woman is like the ivy, which grows luxuriantly while it clings to some sturdy tree, but never thrives if separated from it. - Moliere
posted by SemiSalt at 11:28 AM on June 9, 2018


Robert Burton used "as a shadow to a body."
posted by gennessee at 5:46 PM on June 9, 2018


Or how about thunder and lightning.
posted by gennessee at 5:49 PM on June 9, 2018


Response by poster: Several helpful suggestions here. Just a clarification - I'm looking for something I could swear I've heard said before; I was hoping someone might recognize it. And what I'm looking for is not about things that often go together, but more what methroach caught, things that are impossible to unmix once combined -- like nalyd's Tom Stoppard quote about the rice pudding or Wrinkled Stumpskin's milk from tea. All good suggestions, but I'm still trying to find something more compactly expressed.
posted by leticia at 4:48 AM on June 10, 2018


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