Word.ws English Dictionary

cross the wires

cross the wires verb: of a news story: to break; to be published.

Verb

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

  1. Of a news story: to break; to be published.
    • He called me shortly after the story crossed the wires and cursed at me nonstop for minutes.2009, Laurence H. Meyer, A Term at the Fed: An Insider's View, page 16

Forms of cross the wires

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

Questions about cross the wires

What does cross the wires mean?
Cross the wires means of a news story: to break; to be published.
What part of speech is cross the wires?
Cross the wires is a verb.
What is the past tense of cross the wires?
The past tense of cross the wires is crossed the wires.

Words near cross the wires in the dictionary

  1. cross the streams
  2. cross the Styx
  3. cross the t's and dot the i's
  4. cross the Thames
  5. cross the Tiber
  6. cross the wires
  7. cross to bear
  8. cross to take up
  9. cross training
  10. cross up
  11. cross vanna

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cross the wires (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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