Cross-dressing

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The wearing of clothing which society considers appropriate for the opposite sex rather than the wearer's sex. uncountable
  2. 2
    Display by antigen-presenting cells of antigens obtained from the surface of infected cells. uncountable

    "Now, a study published in Nature shows that cross-dressing does indeed occur and is important for boosting memory CD8+ T cell responses in vivo."

Verb
  1. 1
    present participle and gerund of cross-dress form-of, gerund, participle, present

Synonyms

All synonyms
cd-ingcdingtransvestism

Example

More examples

"I thought my son was being quite sneaky lately. Sure enough, I spotted him uploading a picture of himself cross-dressing and in makeup to a blog."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From cross- + dressing, a calque of German Transvestismus.

Etymology 2

From cross-dress + -ing.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.