Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To betray by acting in contradiction to a prior agreement. See Synonyms at deceive.
- n. An act of betraying an ally, a friend, or an associate.
- n. Genetics A cross in which each parent is the product of a single cross. It can be represented as AB × CD, where A, B, C, and D are inbred lines.
Wiktionary
- v. To betray or go back on
Etymologies
- First recorded in 1834 from thieves' slang cross (or on the cross) to refer to something dishonest, a play on straight/square, and therefore a crook going back on his partners would be crossing the crossers, or double-crossing. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Okay, we lost grandma to cancer because the Blue Cross was more of a double-cross when they told us she'd cost them enough and they weren't paying more, but at least Barack Husein Obama didn't make her shovel-ready.”
The Huffington Post: Brian Ross: The Do-It-Yourself Deprogrammers Guide to Fox News Zombies
“TCM has two of the best: Double Indemnity (tonight, 8 ET/5 PT), a seminal double-cross film noir starring Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray (in a far cry from his My Three Sons days); and Swing Time (10 ET/7 PT), which may just be the best of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers films, and is the only one to address hard economic times.”
“Once again, this struck the natives as the worst kind of double-cross.”
“Donovan cabled Macfarland on January 7: Hatz “is working under orders to double-cross you.””
“In essentially a double-cross of the young scientist by corporate weenies, the cure is administered to a chimp named Caesar, who becomes hyper-intelligent, and eventually leads a revolt of the lab primates.”
“We wanted to send a very strong and clear message about what happens when you double-cross us," said Mr. Gill's political director, Bill Smith, an Alabama-born political operative who began his career in the 1990s working under the tutelage of Karl Rove.”
“Taggart persuades Rearden's Washington man, Wesley Mouch, to double-cross him.”
“-- Actually, since Morgaine is the only member of the (extended) Troika who comes from the regular Earth, might not Krona be planning some sort of double-cross involving whatever connection to the planet she might have?”
“Government double-cross is a severe want, and is mostly hunt down to the biggest range of the law ..”
The Volokh Conspiracy » New Supreme Court Website and New URL
“Them trees just stand up natural an 'strong an' clean like young boys their first time in the ring before they've learned its rottenness an 'how to double-cross an' lay down to the bettin 'odds an' the fightfans.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘double-cross’.
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old timey talk
Words or Sayings from the 1920's or whatever that no one really uses anymore (at least in that context).
scram, bearcat, heavens to betsy, dick, double-cross, ducky, gams, goofy, hooch, jalopy, john, joe and 174 more...
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Former ghosts
Ghost words that I've adopted because the original listers abandoned them. Yarb has more in his Adoption agency, and many orphlings are tagged as ghosted, ghost phrases, misspellings, or typos.
orphling, listkeeper, grandmotherly, scroogish, theocon, frownie, afternoons, loggin, supercalliwhat, avunculate, kokako, stygimolochs and 379 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for double-cross.
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