cross, v.² — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

cross v.²

1. to sit astride a horse.

1984

Partridge DSUE (8th edn) 272/1: from ca.1760.

2. to have sexual intercourse [fig. use of sense 1].

1870		Cythera’s Hymnal 81: They found on the grass / The marks of her arse, / And the knees of the man who had crossed her.
1902		G.R. Bacchus Nemesis Hunt 6: ‘Shure niver a sowl crossed me afore I was wed to my own man but the howly father, and a red-headed child did I bear to his reverence’.

SE in slang uses

In phrases

cross-fam (v.) (also cross-fan) [fam n.¹]

(UK Und.) to pick a pocket by crossing one’s arms in a particular position; also as n.; thus cross-fanningcross-fanner n.

1812		Vaux Vocab. of the Flash Lang.
1859		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. 27: ‘Cross-fanning in a crowd,’ robbing persons of their scarf pins.
c.1864		A. Stephens ‘The Chickaleary Cove’ 🎵 How to do a cross-fam, for a super, or a slang, / And to bustle them grand’armes I’d give the office.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict. [as cit. 1859].
1873		Sl. Dict.
1882		St James’s Gaz. 20 Feb. 6/2: The cross-fanner [...] works alone, or, as he prefers to phrase it, on his own hookstops.
1891		F.W. Carew Autobiog. of a Gipsey 419: Favouring me with a few practical illustrations of his manual dexterity in the performance of such delicate little operations as ‘cross-fanning’, ‘screwing-up,’ and taking a letter from the inside breast-pocket of my coat.

cross out (v.)

1. (US black) to perform a low-level form of gang warfare, the crossing out of a rival gang’s graffiti.

1994		G. Smitherman Black Talk.
2008		www.nagia.or 🌐 A gang may ‘X’ out or cross out the graffiti of a rival gang or gang member, or write ‘187’ (homicide) next to it.

2. (US prison) to punish.

2002

(con. 1998–2000) J. Lerner You Got Nothing Coming 71: Even they shake us down and find it [i.e. some drugs], you know I’ll cop to it. I ain’t lookin’ to get you crossed out.

cross over (v.)

(US black) for a black person to have a relationship with a white one.

1949

Dan Burley ‘Dan Burley’s Clothesline’ 22 Oct. [synd. col.] All the boys down South who’ve been reading [...] how easy it is to ‘cross over’ for what you want up North.

cross the line(s) (v.) (US)

1. of a light-coloured black person, to attempt to pass for white.

1908

R.S. Baker Following the Colour Line 161: I once asked a very light mulatto why he did not ‘cross the line,’ as they call it (or ‘go over to white’) and quit his people.

2. of a homosexual man, to abandon his friends and marry a woman.

1962

R. Hauser Homosexual Society 146: I tried to be respectable [...] so I married a girl. [...] My friends shunned me then for crossing the lines.

cross v.2

SE in slang uses

In phrases

cross v.²