iron cross

plural iron crosses

1. gymnasticsA position on the rings where the gymnast holds the rings straight out on either side of the body.
2. moguls freestyle skiinghobbiesan acrobatic maneuver where the skier remains upright, but the lower leg bends back at the knee 90 degrees, and the ankles twist 45 degrees, so that the back of the skis form a right-angle cross
3. hobbiesA defensive strategy in which the two defencemen, a forward and the goaltender align themselves in a diamond shape so that imaginary lines drawn through the two defencemen and through the forward and goaltender form the shape of a cross.
4. A house plant, Oxalis tetraphylla.

   Synonyms: lucky clover, four-leaf sorrel, four-leaved pink-sorrel

5. Alternative letter-case form of Iron Cross (“a cross pattée used as a German military decoration”).

   There were strong demands that the dead in bombing raids should be marked in the newspapers with an iron cross, like the military dead. The Propaganda Ministry approved of the idea in December 1941, but it was overturned by Hitler ...

   2014, Richard Overy, The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe 1940-1945, Penguin, →ISBN

   Synonyms: crucifix

plural Iron Crosses

1. government(formerly) the second highest military decoration of Germany, under the military order of the Pour le Mérite, or the cross pattée shape of this decoration.

   Germans marked booby-trapped areas with black-and-white signs, bearing an Iron Cross symbol or a death's-head.

   2013, Gordon L. Rottman, World War II Allied Sabotage Devices and Booby Traps, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN, page 56