Crossfire

How to spell crossfire

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce crossfire

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does crossfire mean?

1. nounGunfire from two or more directions that crosses over a common point, endangering anyone in between.
2. nounA position of being caught between two opposing parties, arguments, or attacks.

Crossfire in a sentence

• The patrol was pinned down by crossfire from both ridges.

• The junior manager felt caught in the crossfire between the two feuding directors.

• Civilians sheltered in the cellar to avoid the crossfire in the street.

• The new tax policy left small businesses in the crossfire of the debate.

Where does crossfire come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Crossfire is a compound formed from two native English elements: cross and fire. The element cross comes ultimately from the Latin crux, meaning a stake or gallows, which entered Old English through ecclesiastical use and broadened to mean anything lying athwart or intersecting. Fire descends from the Old English fyr, a word shared with the German Feuer and rooted in an ancient Germanic and Indo-European term for flame, which later took on the military sense of discharging guns. The two were welded together in the nineteenth century to describe gunfire coming from two or more points so that the lines of shooting intersect, trapping anyone in the middle. From that battlefield image the word quickly developed a figurative life, describing a person caught between two opposing arguments or attacks; because it is simply cross plus fire written solid, the only real spelling care is remembering it is one word with the doubled-looking s of cross intact.

How the word is built

• cross (lying across, intersecting)
• fire (gunfire, the act of shooting)