great divide

great divide (plural great divides)

1. (preceded by the definite article) A significant or profound separation, contrast, difference, or gap between two things.
   • 1973, Victor Bonham-Carter, Land and Environment: The Survival of the English Countryside, Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, page 72:

     The First World War was "the great divide", not only because it accelerated changes already evident in the countryside, but because it introduced Government controls on a scale never known before.

   • 2005, J. C. Burke, The Story of Tom Brennan, Sydney: Random House Australia, page 195:

     There was nothing more I wanted than to be hanging out with Fin as if nothing had changed, but that wasn't reality. It was now the great divide.