at cross purposes

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With aims or goals that conflict or interfere with one another, as in I'm afraid the two departments are working at cross purposes. This idiom, first recorded in 1688, may have begun as a 17th-century parlor game called “cross-purposes,” in which a series of subjects (or questions) were divided from their explanations (or answers) and distributed around the room. Players then created absurdities by combining a subject taken from one person with an explanation taken from another.

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Words nearby at cross purposes

ATC, Atchafalaya, Atchison, at close quarters, at close range, at cross purposes, at death's door, at-desk, ate, at each other's throats, A Team

How to use at cross purposes in a sentence

The Via Dolorosa ends at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and is marked by nine stations of the cross.
Oops! Jesus’ Last Steps Are in the Wrong Place|Candida Moss|January 6, 2015|DAILY BEAST
If they were meaningful, we might have realized it before—surely one of these kids wore a cross, or a yarmulke, or a hijab?
Harry Potter and the Torah of Terror|Candida Moss, Joel Baden|January 4, 2015|DAILY BEAST
The reason: activist government and unionized government often work at cross purposes.
How Public Sector Unions Divide the Democrats|Daniel DiSalvo|December 29, 2014|DAILY BEAST
What do you get when you cross an oil company with gay rights?
How Canadian Oilmen Pinkwash the Keystone Pipeline|Jay Michaelson|December 28, 2014|DAILY BEAST

But they refused to cross the street to help because, they told bystanders, the rules required them instead to call 911.
Red Tape Is Strangling Good Samaritans|Philip K. Howard|December 27, 2014|DAILY BEAST
In cross-section the burrows varied from round (three inches in diameter) to oval (three inches high and four inches wide).
Summer Birds From the Yucatan Peninsula|Erwin E. Klaas
I cannot believe that God would think it necessary to come on earth as a man, and die on the Cross.
God and my Neighbour|Robert Blatchford
Results are easily and quickly obtained, and are probably accurate enough for all clinical purposes.
A Manual of Clinical Diagnosis|James Campbell Todd
The alternate hexameter and pentameter are, for most purposes, a more agreeable measure than the hexameter by itself.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 372, October 1846|Various
Tressan was monstrous ill-at-ease, and his face lost a good deal of its habitual plethora of colour.
St. Martin's Summer|Rafael Sabatini

at cross purposes

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