Crossroads

How to spell crossroads

10 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce crossroads

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does crossroads mean?

1. nounA place where two or more roads meet and cross each other.
2. nounA point at which an important decision must be made between different courses of action.

Crossroads in a sentence

• The village shop sits right at the crossroads in the centre of town.

• After losing the contract, the company found itself at a crossroads.

• Traffic backed up at the busy crossroads during the morning rush.

• She reached a crossroads in her career and had to choose between two very different jobs.

Where does crossroads come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a compound built from two old English-language elements. The first part, 'cross', traces back to the Latin crux, meaning literally a stake or a cross, a word that reached Old English partly through Old Norse and Old Irish church usage. The second part, 'road', comes from the Old English rad, which originally meant a riding or a journey on horseback rather than the paved surface we picture today; it shares its root with the verb 'ride'. By the sixteenth century English speakers were joining these to name the spot where two ways physically cut across each other, and the figurative sense of a moment of decisive choice followed naturally. A useful spelling tip is that the word is genuinely 'cross' plus the plural 'roads', so the s belongs to road, not to cross.

How the word is built

• cross (from Latin crux: a cross)
• road (from Old English rad: a riding or journey)
• -s (plural)