SHIPS THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT Definition & Meaning

ships that pass in the night

Often said of people who meet for a brief but intense moment and then part, never to see each other again. These people are like two ships that greet each other with flashing lights and then sail off into the night. From a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow .

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Idioms and Phrases

Individuals who are rarely in the same place at the same time. For example, Jan works the early shift and Paula the late shift—they're two ships that pass in the night . This metaphoric expression comes from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem “The Theologian's Tale” (published in Tales of a Wayside Inn , 1873).

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

To Longfellow we owe dozens of striking phrases we still use: “footprints in the sands of time,” “forever and a day,” “ships that pass in the night,” “A banner with a strange device/ Excelsior!”

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I appreciate that this is the only time Evan Rachel Wood or James Marsden will probably recognize that you exist, but yours are ships that pass in the night.

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There’s something beautiful about two ships that pass in the night, but what about two street-mapping cars?

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They missed each other by about five yards, passed at full steam doing at least eight knots, like ships that pass in the night but speak not to each other in passing, and hurtled onward to their doom.

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"Governments, as wonderful or awful as they might individually be in their randomly changing roles, they are like ships that pass in the night," he said.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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