Word.ws English Dictionary

cross the streams

cross the streams verb: to bring together two very disparate things, or things that the speaker thinks should be kept separate.

Verb

cross the streams (third-person singular simple present crosses the streams, present participle crossing the streams, simple past and past participle crossed the streams)

  1. (colloquial, humorous) To bring together two very disparate things, or things that the speaker thinks should be kept separate.
    • As we weave together our syndication and aggregation networks , we must remain acutely aware of each channel and where it sends or receives content to ensure that we don't cross the streams.2011 March 15, Brian Solis, Engage!: The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 88
    • Halo Diagnostics (or Dx for short) has raised a $19 million Series A to improve diagnosis of several serious illnesses by crossing the streams from multiple tests and making the improved process easily available to providers.2021 March 4, Devin Coldewey, “With $19M A round, Halo Dx combines data streams to better diagnose cancers, dementia and more”, in TechCrunch

Forms of cross the streams

third-person singular presentcrosses the streams
present participlecrossing the streams
past participlecrossed the streams
pastcrossed the streams

Origin of cross the streams

Allusion to the 1984 film Ghostbusters, in which the characters are warned not let the energy streams from their proton packs cross, in order to avoid a catastrophic explosion.

Questions about cross the streams

What does cross the streams mean?
Cross the streams means to bring together two very disparate things, or things that the speaker thinks should be kept separate.
What part of speech is cross the streams?
Cross the streams is a verb.
What is the past tense of cross the streams?
The past tense of cross the streams is crossed the streams.

Words near cross the streams in the dictionary

  1. cross the aisle
  2. cross the floor
  3. cross the line
  4. cross the river
  5. cross the Rubicon
  6. cross the streams
  7. cross the Styx
  8. cross the t's and dot the i's
  9. cross the Thames
  10. cross the Tiber
  11. cross the wires

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cross the streams (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 the streams.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cross_the_streams. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.