Meaning
Thinking alike - sharing a way of looking at things so completely that each understands the other without explanation. Its negative, not on the same wavelength, is the standard gentle verdict on a friendship or working relationship that founders on mutual incomprehension. Warm and conversational; near-universal translation across languages, most of which keep the wave or frequency image. Regional use: General English; radio-age metaphor.
Origin
The metaphor is from radio: a transmitter and a receiver must be tuned to the same wavelength to communicate at all, and two people who understand each other without effort are imagined as two sets tuned to the same frequency. The image belongs to the generation that grew up with broadcasting - the vocabulary of tuning in and wavelengths as carriers of thought entered everyday speech as radio did - though the freely consulted references print no first citation for the figurative phrase, so no first year is claimed here. Wiktionary records the two settled senses, thinking in the same way in general and being in complete agreement on a particular issue, with a 2022 Guardian citation about a couple who finish each other's sentences, and lists see eye to eye among its cross-references. Cambridge's entry is the classic definition: of two or more people, to think in a similar way and to understand each other well.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- be on the same wavelength
- not on the same wavelength
- on a different wavelength
Usage Examples
- The two designers were on the same wavelength: he would start a sentence, she would finish it with the exact clause he meant.
- Their marriage worked until the business did, after which they were permanently on different wavelengths about money.
- Good interviewers get on the subject's wavelength in the first two minutes and simply stay there.