cross-grained

1. 1.

   difficult to deal with

   Synonymscontrarious

   Similarstubborn
2. 2.

   of timber; having fibers running irregularly rather than in parallel

   Synonymscurly-grainedwavy-grained

   Similaruneven

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: cross--grained. The stress falls on "cross-".

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.