yokefellow

yoke +‎ fellow

yokefellow (plural yokefellows)

1. (archaic) A companion; a fellow labourer, a person who works at the same task as another.
   • c. 1605, William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act III, Scene 6,

     I’ll see their trial first. Bring in their evidence.

     [To Edgar] Thou, robed man of justice, take thy place.

     [To the Fool] And thou, his yokefellow of equity,

     Bench by his side.

   • 1849, Charlotte Brontë, Shirley, Chapter 7,

     “ […] If two people like each other, why shouldn’t they consent to live together?”

     “They tire of each other—they tire of each other in a month. A yokefellow is not a companion; he or she is a fellow-sufferer.”

   • 1882, Edward Augustus Freeman, The Reign of William Rufus and the Accession of Henry the First‎

     ...till new grounds of quarrel had arisen between the two unequal yokefellows who were at last fully coupled together.

   • 1922, James Ezra Darby, Jesus, an economic mediator: God's remedy for industrial and international ills

     Brain and hand, and means and muscle, are true yokefellows in modern industrialism. Without the inventor, there could be no machinery...

   • 1999, David E Garland, Reading Matthew: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the First Gospel‎

     Jesus treats his disciples as yokefellows rather than as camels and donkeys to be loaded down (23:4).