Word.ws English Dictionary

ships that pass in the night

ships that pass in the night noun: two or more people who encounter one another in a transitory, incidental manner and whose relationship is without lasting significance; two or more people who almost encounter one another, but do not do so.

Noun

ships that pass in the night pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only, simile) Two or more people who encounter one another in a transitory, incidental manner and whose relationship is without lasting significance; two or more people who almost encounter one another, but do not do so.
    • [H]e sat down and we got into conversation. There wasn't time to talk much. . . . We got along famously. But—oh, well, it was just another case of ships that pass in the night.1922, P. G. Wodehouse, chapter 4, in The Girl on the Boat
    • We very seldom work together on The Archers, we're rarely in the same episodes, so often we're ships that pass in the night.1996 January 7, Isabel Wolff, “Arts & Entertainment: How We Met—Charles Collingwood and Judy Bennett”, in The Independent, UK, retrieved 19 Oct 2013
  2. (broadly, plural, plural-only) Things which have no significant connection or commonality.
    • [T]he central figures in the action seem vaguely unrelated to one another, like ships passing in the night.1966 February 9, James Reston, “Ships Passing In The Night”, in St. Petersburg Times, retrieved 19 Oct 2013, page 14A
    • "Education and business used to be like two ships that passed in the night," said Delaware Gov. Pierre duPont.1984, Susan C. Farkas, Changes & Challenges: City Schools in America, →ISBN, page 129

Examples of ships that pass in the night in a sentence

  • Ordinarily the missionaries' religion and the slaves' religion were like two ships that pass in the night.1999, Janet Duitsman Cornelius, Slave Missions and the Black Church in the Antebellum South, →ISBN, page 68:
  • As a connoisseur of enigmatic titles . . . the Gouldian title that gives me most pleasure is a joint paper, "Clams and brachiopods: Ships that pass in the night," in a learned journal.2009 February 14, Richard Dawkins, "The Science Show: Interpreting Darwin's theory" (transcript of interview), abc.net.au (Australia)...

Forms of ships that pass in the night

alternative formships in the night
alternative formships passing in the night
alternative formships that passed in the night

Origin of ships that pass in the night

From a poetic metaphor by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882).

Questions about ships that pass in the night

What does ships that pass in the night mean?
Ships that pass in the night means two or more people who encounter one another in a transitory, incidental manner and whose relationship is without lasting significance; two or more people who almost encounter one another, but do not do so.
How do you use ships that pass in the night in a sentence?
Ordinarily the missionaries' religion and the slaves' religion were like two ships that pass in the night.
What part of speech is ships that pass in the night?
Ships that pass in the night is a noun.

Words near ships that pass in the night in the dictionary

  1. ships of the line
  2. ships of war
  3. ships out
  4. ships over
  5. ships passing in the night
  6. ships that pass in the night
  7. ships that passed in the night
  8. ships' companies
  9. ships' husbands
  10. ships-of-the-line
  11. shipset

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ships that pass in the night (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-ships that pass in the night.ogg.

Cite this entry: “ships that pass in the night.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ships_that_pass_in_the_night. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.