Word.ws English Dictionary

cross-bencher

/ˌkɹɒsˈbɛnt͡ʃə/

cross-bencher noun: a member of the British House of Lords or the Senate of Canada or Australia who sits on a cross-bench, or who proclaims independence or political neutrality.

Noun

cross-bencher (plural cross-benchers)

  1. A member of the British House of Lords or the Senate of Canada or Australia who sits on a cross-bench, or who proclaims independence or political neutrality.
    • Putting the hereditary nobility to one side, the life peers, and especially the cross-benchers, carry on an older, less narrowly professional tradition of distinguished service: rule by the ‘great and the good’, if not necessarily the best and brightest.2007, Bruce Ackerman, “Meritocracy v. Democracy”, in London Review of Books, volume 29, number 5, page 9

Forms of cross-bencher

pluralcross-benchers
alternative formcrossbencher

Origin of cross-bencher

From cross-bench + -er.

Questions about cross-bencher

What does cross-bencher mean?
Cross-bencher means a member of the British House of Lords or the Senate of Canada or Australia who sits on a cross-bench, or who proclaims independence or political neutrality.
What part of speech is cross-bencher?
Cross-bencher is a noun.
How do you pronounce cross-bencher?
Cross-bencher is pronounced /ˌkɹɒsˈbɛnt͡ʃə/.
What is the plural of cross-bencher?
The plural of cross-bencher is cross-benchers.

Words near cross-bencher in the dictionary

  1. cross-bedding
  2. cross-beddings
  3. cross-belt sorter
  4. cross-belt sorters
  5. cross-bench
  6. cross-bencher
  7. cross-benchers
  8. cross-benches
  9. cross-birth
  10. cross-births
  11. cross-bit

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cross-bencher (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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Cite this entry: “cross-bencher.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cross-bencher. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.