Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The basic, central, or critical point or feature.
- noun A puzzling or apparently insoluble problem.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A cross. See phrases below. Specifically
- noun The Southern Cross, the most celebrated constellation of the southern heavens.
- noun The cross as an instrument of torture; hence, anything that puzzles or vexes in a high degree; a conundrum.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun Anything that is very puzzling or difficult to explain.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The basic,
central , oressential point or feature. - noun The
critical ortransitional moment orissue , aturning point . - noun A
puzzle ordifficulty . - noun The
hardest point of a climb. - noun heraldry A
cross on acoat of arms .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the most important point
- noun a small conspicuous constellation in the southern hemisphere in the Milky Way near Centaurus
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Nor does the Latin word crux automatically refer to a cross while patibulum refer to the cross-beam.
Signs of the Times 2010
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As for the main crux of your question I view commenting on blogs as inherently different from writing a blog.
Matthew Yglesias » Journalists, Bloggers, and Status Anxiety 2009
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The crux is that few banks have been incentivised to voluntarily contribute comprehensive, high-quality information, limiting the scale of such efforts.
Rating Agencies Should Get A Death Sentence Yuval Bar-Or 2010
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The main crux of our authors argument seems to be in this passage: To kill a reader of this newspaper would be to kill a creature richly aware of its environment and full of beliefs and desires, including the desire to continue living.
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While the main crux of the discussion was about the abysmal treatment received, mention was made of computers, and that they are subject to search and seizure, as are jump drives, external harddrives, and all other electronic data storage devices, and they need virtually zero reason or cause to do it.
lonely 2009
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The delicious dramatic crux is that the more precarious Mary's prospects for survival become, the more unnerved Elizabeth appears.
Theater review of 'Mary Stuart' by the Washington Shakespeare Company Peter Marks 2010
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The crux is that few banks have been incentivised to voluntarily contribute comprehensive, high-quality information, limiting the scale of such efforts.
Rating Agencies Should Get A Death Sentence Yuval Bar-Or 2010
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The crux is that people are paid, mostly, to do difficult and unpleasant things which they wouldn't otherwise do.
Simply Wonderful, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009
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But what's the crux is what's considered "difficult".
My Prerogative Matthew Guerrieri 2008
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Updates, 5/16: "It seems silly and grandiose to lavish praise on a movie whose dramatic crux is the recording of a demo tape, and there is some danger that the critical love showered on Once will come to seem a bit disproportionate," warns AO Scott.
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