crisscross

• criss-cross

From Middle English crist-crosse, crists-crosse (“Christ's cross”).

• enPR: krĭsʹ-krŏs', IPA^(key): /ˈkɹɪs.ˌkɹɒs/
  • (US) [ˈkɹɪs.ˌkɹɔs]
  • (UK) [ˈkɹɪs.ˌkɹɒs]

  • Audio (Southern England)

    (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪskɹɒs

crisscross (third-person singular simple present crisscrosses, present participle crisscrossing, simple past and past participle crisscrossed)

1. (transitive) To move back and forth over or through.
   • 2000, Bill Oddie, Gripping Yarns, page 71:

     As it turned out, the itinerary was disconcertingly illogical, involving criss-crossing America in anything but a straight line.

   • 2008 October, Davy Rothbart, “How I caught up with dad”, in Men's Health, volume 23, number 8, →ISSN, page 112:

     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.

   • 2019 February 27, Drachinifel, 27:22 from the start, in The Battle of Samar - Odds? What are those?‎, archived from the original on 3 November 2022:

     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.

2. (transitive) To mark with crossed lines.

crisscross (countable and uncountable, plural crisscrosses)

1. (countable) A pattern of crossed lines.
   • 1985, Margaret Atwood, “Shopping”, in The Handmaid’s Tale, Toronto, Ont.: McClelland and Stewart, →ISBN, page 30:

     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.

2. (countable) A mark or cross, such as the signature of a person who is unable to write.
3. (countable) A kind of crossword puzzle having no clues or definitions, but only a list of words that must be fitted into the grid.
   • 1992, Judy Salpeter, Kids and Computers: A Parent's Handbook, page 213:

     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.

   • 2010, Helene Hovanec, Ultimate Puzzle Challenge: Mind Mashers, page 3:

     Welcome to the Ultimate Puzzle Challenge — a brand-new series of books for children who love word searches, crisscrosses, mazes, crosswords, and variety puzzles.

4. (obsolete, uncountable) A child's game played on paper or on a slate, consisting of lines arranged in the form of a cross. (Can we add an example for this sense?)

crisscross (not comparable)

1. Marked with crossed lines.

• crisscross-row

crisscross (not comparable)

1. Crossing one another.