Word.ws English Dictionary

at cross-purposes

at cross-purposes prepositional phrase: mutually misunderstanding each other's plans, intentions or meanings.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Mutually misunderstanding each other's plans, intentions or meanings.
    • The PTO and the school board have been working at cross-purposes.

Questions about at cross-purposes

What does at cross-purposes mean?
At cross-purposes means mutually misunderstanding each other's plans, intentions or meanings.
What part of speech is at cross-purposes?
At cross-purposes is a prepositional phrase.

Words near at cross-purposes in the dictionary

  1. at call
  2. at church every time the doors are open
  3. at church every time the doors swing open
  4. at command
  5. at cost
  6. at cross-purposes
  7. at daggers drawn
  8. at dark
  9. at death's door
  10. at each other's throats
  11. at ease

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: at cross-purposes (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-at cross-purposes.ogg.

Cite this entry: “at cross-purposes.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/at_cross-purposes. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.