What does "star-crossed" mean?

Ill-fated by destiny, the fate of the person being “written in the stars”.

What is a synonym for "star-crossed"?

Common synonyms include: augurous, badly off, baleful, bodeful, boding, brooding.

Pronounced //ˈstɑːˌkɹɒst//.

//ˈstɑːˌkɹɒst// adj

adj ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Adjective

1
Ill-fated by destiny, the fate of the person being “written in the stars”. idiomatic
"The star-crossed lovers looked into each other's eyes, before dying."

"Tom and Mary are star-crossed lovers."

From star + crossed. Coined by William Shakespeare in 1597 in Romeo and Juliet, see quotations.

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