to work at cross-purposes
1
6.7
- idiom
- Informal
:
trabajar en direcciones opuestas
- The marketing and product development teams are working at cross-purposes, leading to confusion about the project direction.
- We often work at cross-purposes
Examples
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The government's strategies—sanctioning and appeasement—actually worked at cross-purposes.
Academic text (2000) -
To assure that he was not working at cross-purposes with the folklorists at UCLA, Dundes wrote Wayland Hand about the plans he and Bascom envisioned for a folklore program at Berkeley.
Academic text (2017) -
Is it possible to divide business interests so that some business interests are working at cross purposes with other business interests?
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I mean all of that and everyone has to make sure they're all not working at cross purposes with each other.
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And so too, for that matter, would be the situation in which different regions work at cross-purposes.
Academic text (2004) -
While political parties are uniquely capable of carrying out these three tasks, their success is not guaranteed, particularly because the three can work at cross-purposes.
Academic text (2000) -
In reality, single-payer advocates and supporters of the HSA often worked at cross-purposes, playing into the hands of their mutual opponents.
Academic text (1997) -
That there were a great many groups working toward the "resettlement" of the Japanese Americans often meant that they worked at cross-purposes with each other, which, from time to time, resulted in veritable "turf wars." 27
Academic text (2004) -
The official curriculum is controlled by a confusing mélange of disparate forces that often work at cross-purposes.
Academic text (1995) -
In addition to being "false, cruel, un-British, and above all, un-Christian," deportation would work at cross-purposes with the church's commitment to the principle of dispersal.
Academic text (2004)
Synonyms
4
8.2
To try to please two people or groups who want different things and fail to please either
Antonyms
How Aligned
Surface Forms
Morphology
work + at + cross-purposes
The components 'cross' (against) and 'purposes' (goals) give a clear semantic hint that parties are moving in opposing directions, and 'work at' signals acting in relation to that state, so part of the meaning is derivable. However, 'cross-purposes' is a conventionalized compound and the full collocational pattern 'work at cross-purposes' is somewhat idiomatic; a B1 learner who knows the words may only partially infer the exact sense without prior exposure.
Etymology
Work at cross-purposes paints a picture of people trying to work but heading toward different 'purposes' that cross like two paths, so they pull in different directions and get little done. That's why it means 'to act with goals that fight each other and stop progress'.