Tweedledum and Tweedledee

From Tweedledum and Tweedledee, a pair of identical characters in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. Their names may have originally come from an epigram written by poet John Byrom.

• IPA^(key): /ˌtwiːdəlˈdʌm ən ˌtwiːdəlˈdiː/

Tweedledum and Tweedledee

1. (derogatory) Two persons or organizations deemed indistinguishable in some way.

   The radicals said that Nixon and Humphrey were Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

2. (derogatory) A pair of people who spend a lot of time together, and look and act similarly.
   • 2007, Stephen Booth, Blood on the Tongue: A Crime Novel:

     Some officers were starting to call Edendale's two detective chief inspectors Tweedledum and Tweedledee, because they were rarely seen except when they were sitting alongside each other at the head of a briefing.

   • 2010 August 25, Seumas Milne, “Ed is the only Miliband who offers a genuine alternative”, in The Guardian online‎:

     With their apparently identikit backgrounds and bland politicians' patter, the contest has sometimes seemed an incestuous choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. When even the promised fratricidal war between the Miliband brothers failed to take off, one newspaper cartoonist illustrated a caricature of the contestants with the caption: Who cares who wins?

• (two persons or organizations deemed indistinguishable in some way): six of one, half a dozen of the other

• Tweedledum and Tweedledumber