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Cross can be a preposition, an adjective, a verb or a noun.

cross used as a preposition:

  1. across

Prepositions are used to show the relationship between a noun or pronoun and another word. Examples of prepositions are: in, during, beside, after, for. In the sentence "Sows suffer in factory farms." The preposition "in" tells us the position of the sow relative to the factory farm. Learn more →

cross used as an adjective:

  1. Transverse; lying across the main direction.
    "At the end of each row were cross benches which linked the rows."
  2. Opposite, opposed to.
    "His actions were perversely cross to his own happiness."
  3. Opposing, adverse; being contrary to what one would hope or wish for.
  4. Bad-tempered, angry, annoyed.
    "She was rather cross about missing her train on the first day of the job."

Adjectives are are describing words. An adjective is a word that modifies a noun or pronoun (examples: small, scary, silly). Adjectives make the meaning of a noun more precise. Learn more →

cross used as a verb:

  1. To mark with an X.
  2. To go from one side of (something) to the other.
    "Why did the chicken cross the road?"
  3. To travel in a direction or path that will intersect with that of another.
    "Ships crossing from starboard have right-of-way."
  4. To contradict (another) or frustrate the plans of.
    ""You'll rue the day you tried to cross me, Tom Hero!" bellowed the villain."
  5. (reflexive to cross oneself) To make the sign of the cross over oneself.
  6. Of both batsmen, to pass each other when running between the wickets in order to score runs.
  7. to cross-fertilize or crossbreed
  8. to conduct a cross examination; to question a hostile witness
  9. To pass the ball from one side of the pitch to the other side.

Verbs are action words and state of being words. Examples of action words are: ran, attacking, dreamed. Examples of "state of being" words are: is, was, be. Learn more →

cross used as a noun:

  1. A geometrical figure consisting of two straight lines or bars intersecting each other such that at least one of them is bisected by the other.
  2. Any geometric figure having this or a similar shape, such as a cross of Lorraine or a Maltese cross.
  3. A wooden post with a perpendicular beam attached and used (especially in the Roman Empire) to execute criminals (by crucifixion).
  4. (usually with the) The cross on which Christ was crucified.
  5. A hand gesture made by Catholics in imitation of the shape of the Cross.
  6. A modified representation of the crucifixion stake, worn as jewellery or displayed as a symbol of religious devotion.
  7. (figurative, from Christ's bearing of the cross) A difficult situation that must be endured.
    "It's a cross I must bear."
  8. Animal or plant produced by crossbreeding or cross-fertilization.
  9. a hook thrown over the opponent's punch
  10. A kick in which the ball travels from one side of the pitch to the other
  11. A place where roads intersect and lead off in four directions; a crossroad (common in UK and Irish place names such as Gerrards Cross).
  12. A monument that marks such a place. (Also common in UK or Irish place names such as Charing Cross)

Nouns are naming words. They are used to represent a person (soldier, Jamie), place (Germany, beach), thing (telephone, mirror), quality (hardness, courage), or an action (a run, a punch). Learn more →

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What type of word is cross?

As detailed above, 'cross' can be a preposition, an adjective, a verb or a noun. Here are some examples of its usage:
  1. Adjective usage: At the end of each row were cross benches which linked the rows.
  2. Adjective usage: His actions were perversely cross to his own happiness.
  3. Adjective usage: She was rather cross about missing her train on the first day of the job.
  4. Verb usage: Why did the chicken cross the road?
  5. Verb usage: Ships crossing from starboard have right-of-way.
  6. Verb usage: "You'll rue the day you tried to cross me, Tom Hero!" bellowed the villain.
  7. Noun usage: It's a cross I must bear.

Unfortunately, with the current database that runs this site, I don't have data about which senses of cross are used most commonly. I've got ideas about how to fix this but will need to find a source of "sense" frequencies. Hopefully there's enough info above to help you understand the part of speech of cross, and guess at its most common usage.

Word Type

For those interested in a little info about this site: it's a side project that I developed while working on Describing Words and Related Words. Both of those projects are based around words, but have much grander goals. I had an idea for a website that simply explains the word types of the words that you search for - just like a dictionary, but focussed on the part of speech of the words. And since I already had a lot of the infrastructure in place from the other two sites, I figured it wouldn't be too much more work to get this up and running.

The dictionary is based on the amazing Wiktionary project by wikimedia. I initially started with WordNet, but then realised that it was missing many types of words/lemma (determiners, pronouns, abbreviations, and many more). This caused me to investigate the 1913 edition of Websters Dictionary - which is now in the public domain. However, after a day's work wrangling it into a database I realised that there were far too many errors (especially with the part-of-speech tagging) for it to be viable for Word Type.

Finally, I went back to Wiktionary - which I already knew about, but had been avoiding because it's not properly structured for parsing. That's when I stumbled across the UBY project - an amazing project which needs more recognition. The researchers have parsed the whole of Wiktionary and other sources, and compiled everything into a single unified resource. I simply extracted the Wiktionary entries and threw them into this interface! So it took a little more work than expected, but I'm happy I kept at it after the first couple of blunders.

Special thanks to the contributors of the open-source code that was used in this project: the UBY project (mentioned above), @mongodb and express.js.

Currently, this is based on a version of wiktionary which is a few years old. I plan to update it to a newer version soon and that update should bring in a bunch of new word senses for many words (or more accurately, lemma).

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