Word.ws English Dictionary

natick

natick noun: an intersection of two obscure crossword puzzle clues.

Noun (1)

natick (plural naticks)

  1. An intersection of two obscure crossword puzzle clues.
    • “The NATICK Principle. And here it is: If you include a proper noun in your grid that you cannot reasonably expect more than 1/4 of the solving public to have heard of, you must cross that noun with reasonably common words and phrases or very common names.”2008 July 6, Rex Parker, “("TREASURE ISLAND" ILLUSTRATOR, 1911 / TOWN AT THE EIGHTH MILE OF THE BOSTON MARATHON) - SUNDAY, Jul. 6, 2008 - Brendan Emmett Quigley”, in Rex Parker Does the NY Times...
    • “A crossword blogger by the name of Rex Parker critiqued one of my puzzles in The New York Times, where the illustrator 'N.C. Wyeth' crossed the Boston town 'Natick,'” Quigley explains. “[Parker] said, 'Who in their right mind is going to understand what's going to fit in that one square? It's...2017 January 8, Julia Franz, “Crossword puzzle-making tips from a pro at The New York Times”, in Studio 360, Public Radio International

Proper noun capitalized: Natick

Natick

  1. A town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States.
  2. Synonym of Massachusett (“an Algonquian language”).
    Synonyms:
    Massachusett

Noun (2) capitalized: Natick

Natick (plural Naticks)

  1. (historical) A member of the Praying Indians of Natick, a community of indigenous Christian converts in the town of Natick, Massachusetts, United States.

Examples of natick in a sentence

  • Wyeth' crossed the Boston town 'Natick,'” Quigley explains.2017 January 8, Julia Franz, “Crossword puzzle-making tips from a pro at The New York Times”, in Studio 360, Public Radio International:
  • “There were some tough proper nouns today (including a personal natick, included below) — BAYLOR, KRIS, RILKE, ILYA and DANA, among others.2018 April 18, Caitlin Lovinger, “Let’s Change the Subject”, in The New York Times:

Synonyms of natick

Forms of natick

pluralnaticks
pluralNaticks

Origin of natick

Named after Natick, Massachusetts, used as an example of an obscure clue with, “Town at the eighth mile of the Boston Marathon”. The town is named after the local native word from the Natick people for “Land of Many Hills”.

Words formed from natick

Questions about natick

What does natick mean?
Natick means an intersection of two obscure crossword puzzle clues.
How do you use natick in a sentence?
Wyeth' crossed the Boston town 'Natick,'” Quigley explains.
What part of speech is natick?
Natick can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of natick?
The plural of natick is naticks.

Words near natick in the dictionary

  1. Nathu La
  2. Nathusius's pipistrelle
  3. naticid
  4. naticids
  5. naticiform
  6. natick
  7. naticks
  8. naticoid
  9. naticoids
  10. natiform
  11. natimortality

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: natick (page history and authors); Natick (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.

Last updated:

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