Word.ws English Dictionary

cross-staves

cross-staves is the plural of cross-staff.

Meaning of cross-staff

Noun

cross-staff (plural cross-staffs or cross-staves)

  1. (obsolete) An archbishop's cross.
  2. (historical) An early instrument, consisting of a wooden rod with a sliding crosspiece, used for measuring the altitude of a star or for surveying.
    • The cross-staff is a very simple instrument, a calibrated shaft along which a bar slides.2015, David Wootton, The Invention of Science, Penguin, published 2016, page 188

Questions about cross-staves

What is cross-staves the plural of?
Cross-staves is the plural of cross-staff.

Words near cross-staves in the dictionary

  1. cross-specialty
  2. cross-springer
  3. cross-springers
  4. cross-staff
  5. cross-staffs
  6. cross-staves
  7. cross-step
  8. cross-stitch
  9. cross-stitched
  10. cross-stitcher
  11. cross-stitchers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cross-staves (page history and authors); cross-staff (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-staves.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cross-staves. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.