strange bedfellows
idiomatic phrase

- an unlikely alliance of people or things

Merriam-Webster

—
ORIGIN

Although strictly speaking bedfellows are persons who share a bed, like husband and wife, the term has been used figuratively since the late 1400s.

William Shakespeare popularised the phrase in his play 'The Tempest', written in 1610-1611. A man has been shipwrecked and finds himself seeking shelter beside a sleeping monster:

“…there is no other shelter hereabout: misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows.”

—
ICONIC BEDFELLOWS

- James Watson and Francis Crick

Drs. Watson and Crick didn’t know each other particularly well before they began their collaboration to discover the structure of DNA. But, by building on the work of the chemist Dr. Rosalind Franklin, they were able to describe the double helix and to lay the foundation for understanding the human genome.

- Paul McCartney and John Lennon

Highly competitive, the duo frequently challenged one another. John would write Strawberry Fields, and Paul would respond with Penny Lane. It was a relationship of one-upmanship that pushed each of them to be their creative best and was the driving force behind the sound that changed popular music forever.

- Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Larry Page and Sergey Brin met when Brin, a student at Stanford, gave Page a tour of the campus. They started a company to experiment with search algorithms. Google has grown into a suite of technologies that have changed the world, now processing over 4 billion searches per day.

Adapted from Post-It Dot Com

—
SYNONYMS

accomplice, ally, BEDFELLOW, bedmate, co-conspirator, confidante, fellow traveler, kissing cousin, partner in crime

—
Practice OWAD in an English conversation, say something like:

“Jim and Peter really are STRANGE BEDFELLOWS, sharing the same job but totally different in their views.“

—
HERZLICHEN DANK to all readers helping me keep OWAD alive with single or monthly donations at:

https://donorbox.org/please-become-a-friend-of-owad-3

Paul Smith