crosshead
noun
crosshead is a noun meaning “A metal beam that connects a piston to a connecting rod in an engine” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-R-O-S-S-H-E-A-D, and it appears about once in every 33 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of crosshead is crossheads.
What does crosshead mean?
noun
- 1
A metal beam that connects a piston to a connecting rod in an engine.
- 2
Large text, like a headline but typically drawn from the article, placed partway through the article to break it up visually.
- 3
A screw with a cross-shaped indentation for gripping and turning, as opposed to a flathead.
- 4
A note with an x-shaped notehead, indicating a non-tonal sound such as a drumbeat or a rapped syllable.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of crosshead
- crossheads plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is crosshead?
Crosshead appears about once in every 33 million words in written English, the 176,009th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does crosshead come from?
From cross + head.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).