What does "intercross" mean?

The act or product of intercrossing

What is a synonym for "intercross"?

Common synonyms include: bar, crisscross, cross, crossbreed, cut across, intersect.

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Noun

1
The act or product of intercrossing
"Intercrosses are particularly useful with recessive mutations maintained in a small colony."

Verb

1
To cross back over one another
"From this trunk, like a tower, rose an enormous tenfold ramification, the branches of which crossed and intercrossed, and forked and developed, […]"
2
To breed two strains having a common ancestry with one another
"A species varies occasionally in two directions, but owing to their free intercrossing they (the variations) never increase."

"From this trunk, like a tower, rose an enormous tenfold ramification, the branches of which crossed and intercrossed, and forked and developed, […]"

From inter- + cross.

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