student asking question

Is "divide and conquer" used often? Please give me some examples.

teacher

Native speaker’s answer

Rebecca

The idiom "divide and conquer" means to make a group of people disagree and fight with one another so that they will not join together against you. Ex: Rachel is so popular because she divides and conquers all of her minions and makes sure they all dislike each other. The idiom is also, especially nowadays, most commonly used to mean that you accomplish something by having several people work on it separately and at the same time. Which is how it is being used in this particular clip. Ex: The only way we'll ever get this project finished on time is if we divide and conquer. I'll put the slides together while you type up the hand-out.

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