cross the streams

English

Etymology

Allusion to the 1984 film Ghostbusters, in which the characters are warned not let the energy streams from their proton packs cross, in order to avoid a catastrophic explosion.

Verb

cross the streams (third-person singular simple present crosses the streams, present participle crossing the streams, simple past and past participle crossed the streams)

1. (colloquial, humorous) To bring together two very disparate things, or things that the speaker thinks should be kept separate.
   • 2011 March 15, Brian Solis, Engage!: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 88:

     As we weave together our syndication and aggregation networks , we must remain acutely aware of each channel and where it sends or receives content to ensure that we don't cross the streams.

   • 2021 March 4, Devin Coldewey, “With $19M A round, Halo Dx combines data streams to better diagnose cancers, dementia and more”, in TechCrunch‎^[1]:

     Halo Diagnostics (or Dx for short) has raised a $19 million Series A to improve diagnosis of several serious illnesses by crossing the streams from multiple tests and making the improved process easily available to providers.

   • 2021 April 23, Marina Hyde, “Boris Johnson has a text addiction and it’s bad news for all of us”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     You could certainly leave it to Johnson to cross the streams of this week’s two biggest news stories – lobbying and football.

   • 2024 July 15, Kyle Barr, “This Free App Lets You Emulate Windows on Your iPhone”, in Gizmodo‎^[3]:

     Now, a new app on the App Store will allow you to run a virtual machine for Windows, Linux, and even macOS without jailbreaking your iPhone. Talk about crossing the streams.