cross section

Questions about cross section

What does cross section mean?

cross section means "a section created by a plane cutting a solid perpendicular to its longest axis". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

Is cross section a common word?

cross section is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.