AT CROSS PURPOSES Definition & Meaning

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at cross purposes

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Idioms and Phrases

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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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

“We have a priority to house people in California and we may be working at cross purposes,” she said, referring to public money going toward both raising the rent and lowering it.

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It was also a moment of alignment for Republicans who have at times been at cross purposes, like Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, another Trump acolyte, and Kevin McCarthy, the former House speaker Mr. Gaetz and other hard right members pushed out last year.

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“Animal welfare” is sometimes misused as a synonym for “animal rights,” but in practice the two worldviews can sometimes be at cross purposes.

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The military isn’t the only institution to find itself at cross purposes with young Americans.

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“Gov. Newsom is going to have to be extremely careful that what he does in the world of climate change, energy and these kinds of actually very constructive places where we do need to interact with China, don’t run at cross purposes with Washington,” Schell said.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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