"caught between two stools" meaning in English

See caught between two stools in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Phrase

Head templates: {{head|en|phrase|head=caught between two stools}} caught between two stools
  1. Unable to fit into either of two conflicting categories, and as a result likely to fail.
    Sense id: en-caught_between_two_stools-en-phrase-IyEFRwe0 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Pages with 1 entry, Pages with entries
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        "head": "caught between two stools"
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2011, Mohammed Saad, Girma Zawdie, Theory and Practice of Triple Helix Model in Developing Countries:",
          "text": "Scientists are caught between two stools. On the one hand, they have been brought up to apply rigorous experimental procedures to precisely defined problems with results that have to meet standards of peer review. On the other hand, they are being told that such reductionism is insufficient and that unless they broaden the scope of their work they will suffer reduced support.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, Janek Wasserman, Black Vienna: The Radical Right in the Red City, 1918–1938:",
          "text": "No matter how hard they tried to clarify their position, the universalists found themselves “caught between two stools”—that is, Nazism and Austrofascism— rejected by the former and rejecting the latter.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2016, Laurent Vidal, Alain Musset, Waiting Territories in the Americas, page 214:",
          "text": "As a result, they are caught between two stools: on the one hand, they model their social integration on traditional gender roles and struggle to live by these standards, even though these roles are at odds with what they actually feel; and on the other hand, they feel that these gender roles constrain them and diminish their sense of their personal identity, either because they cannot live by the standards these roles imposed on them or because their aspiration to put them selve first encourages them to refuse to allow themselves to be hemmed in.",
          "type": "quote"
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        "Unable to fit into either of two conflicting categories, and as a result likely to fail."
      ],
      "id": "en-caught_between_two_stools-en-phrase-IyEFRwe0"
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  "word": "caught between two stools"
}
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          "ref": "2011, Mohammed Saad, Girma Zawdie, Theory and Practice of Triple Helix Model in Developing Countries:",
          "text": "Scientists are caught between two stools. On the one hand, they have been brought up to apply rigorous experimental procedures to precisely defined problems with results that have to meet standards of peer review. On the other hand, they are being told that such reductionism is insufficient and that unless they broaden the scope of their work they will suffer reduced support.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014, Janek Wasserman, Black Vienna: The Radical Right in the Red City, 1918–1938:",
          "text": "No matter how hard they tried to clarify their position, the universalists found themselves “caught between two stools”—that is, Nazism and Austrofascism— rejected by the former and rejecting the latter.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2016, Laurent Vidal, Alain Musset, Waiting Territories in the Americas, page 214:",
          "text": "As a result, they are caught between two stools: on the one hand, they model their social integration on traditional gender roles and struggle to live by these standards, even though these roles are at odds with what they actually feel; and on the other hand, they feel that these gender roles constrain them and diminish their sense of their personal identity, either because they cannot live by the standards these roles imposed on them or because their aspiration to put them selve first encourages them to refuse to allow themselves to be hemmed in.",
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        "Unable to fit into either of two conflicting categories, and as a result likely to fail."
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-01-08 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-01-01 using wiktextract (9a96ef4 and 4ed51a5). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.