cross-grained

Questions about cross-grained

What does cross-grained mean?

cross-grained means "difficult to deal with". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in cross-grained?

cross-grained has 2 syllables and divides as cross--grained under the regular spelling rules. It is not in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, so that comes from how the word is written rather than from a recorded pronunciation, and no stress or phonetic transcription is claimed for it.

What is another word for cross-grained?

Close synonyms include contrarious, curly-grained, wavy-grained. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is cross-grained a common word?

cross-grained is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.