crosscut

American  

[kraws-kuht, kros-] / ˈkrɔsˌkʌt, ˈkrɒs- /

adjective

1. made or used for cutting crosswise.

2. cut across the grain or on the bias.

---

noun

1. a transverse cut or course.

2. a shortcut by way of an area not ordinarily traversed, as grass or open country; a route that cuts diagonally across a road or path network.

3. Mining. an underground passageway, usually from a shaft to a vein of ore or crosswise of a vein of ore.

4. Movies, Television. an act or instance of crosscutting.

5. a crosscut saw.

verb (used with object)

crosscut, crosscutting

1. to cut or go across.

2. Movies, Television. to insert into a scene or sequence (portions of another scene), as to heighten suspense or suggest simultaneous action.

verb (used without object)

crosscut, crosscutting

1. Movies, Television. to employ the technique of crosscutting.

crosscut British  

/ ˈkrɒsˌkʌt /

adjective

1. cut at right angles or obliquely to the major axis

---

noun

1. a transverse cut or course

2. a less common word for short cut

3. mining a tunnel through a vein of ore or from the shaft to a vein

verb

1. to cut across

2. Also: intercut.  films to link (two sequences or two shots) so that they appear to be taking place at the same time

Other Word Forms

• crosscutter
  noun

Etymology

Origin of crosscut

First recorded in 1580–90; cross- + cut

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

crosscut crosscutting

“I don’t like the crosscut, because you’re relying on someone else.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 5, 2025

Howe and Stokes both grew up in Portland, and neither had a background in timber cutting, let alone using crosscut saws - the 19th-century tool known by lumberjacks as a “misery whip.”

From Washington Times ● Oct. 28, 2018

Working with crosscut saws, shovels and a combination digging-cutting tool called a Pulaski, they sought to starve fires using similar methods to those of contemporary smoke jumpers.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 11, 2017

It features footage of an unnamed white rat crosscut with video of his granddaughter Amy when she was about a year old.

From The New Yorker ● Jan. 25, 2016

I wouldn’t have been more scared if someone had thrown a crosscut saw at me.

From "Summer of the Monkeys" by Wilson Rawls

But crosscutting concerns for months had made it impossible to gain traction.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 5, 2025

And yet, the series takes pains to connect them, thematically and visually, in the editing process, through crosscutting that links them throughout different periods of their lives.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 18, 2024

There’s the part at the end of the song that’s crosscutting between Harris and Evelyn, and Nathan Lane just floats this lovely falsetto at the end.

From Salon ● Oct. 26, 2023

Calm skies must also prevail because crosscutting winds called shear can rip holes in a nascent hurricane’s vortex.

From Scientific American ● Jun. 1, 2023

The waters of Scrubgrass Bend, for instance, were crosscutting over Scrubgrass Towhead in one league-wide sheet, and Islands Seventy-this-and-that and Islands Sixty-that-and-this were under them to their tree-tops.

From Gideon's Band A Tale of the Mississippi by George Washington Cable

Related Words

• cut across
• transect