crisscross
/ˈkɹɪsˌkɹɒs/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 2.28 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A kind of crossword puzzle having no clues or definitions, but only a list of words that must be fitted into the grid.
Countable
noun
A child's game played on paper or on a slate, consisting of lines arranged in the form of a cross.
Obsolete; Uncountable
adj
Marked with crossed lines; crisscrossed.
adv
Example Sentences
- "As it turned out, the itinerary was disconcertingly illogical, involving criss-crossing America in anything but a straight line."
- "He told me about all the odd jobs he'd taken after I was born, when Michigan's economy was tanking. For one, he crisscrossed the Midwest buying old carpets from dentists' offices."
- "Throughout this period, and beyond, into the rest of the battle, aircraft of various types and loadouts are crisscrossing the skies in desperate harassment attacks, with the pilots having to play constant games of "guess the carrier" to decide where to land as escort carriers are hit, sunk, disappear in columns of shell splashes, or are forced to evade at angles to the wind that make landing on them impossible."
- "We reach the first barrier, which is like the barriers blocking off roadworks, or dug-up sewers: a wooden crisscross painted in yellow and black stripes, a red hexagon which means Stop."
- "A definite advantage of the fact that no fill-in-the-blank sentences are used is that it's very easy for kids to enter their own words and see them instantly transformed into crisscrosses, word searches, and other fun games."
- "Welcome to the Ultimate Puzzle Challenge — a brand-new series of books for children who love word searches, crisscrosses, mazes, crosswords, and variety puzzles."
Etymology
From Middle English crist-crosse, crists-crosse (“Christ's cross”). By surface analysis, an apophonic reduplication of cross.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: crist-crosse