Learn English – American English for “cross-party”

american-englishvocabulary

I came across the word 'cross-party' while reading the newspaper. I didn't know this word so I looked it up in a dictionary. (Denoting interaction between two or more political parties).

I noticed that I didn't find this word in an AmE dictionary, it only seems to exist in BrE. I have done an advanced search in google and it is almost never used on CNN (3.000 results in 0,46 sec), but BBC seems to use it quite often (45000 results in 0,46 sec).

Now my question is next: Is there a synonym for this word in AmE?

Best Answer

In the US, the term bipartisan is often used, as most politicians identify with either the Republican or the Democratic party. This is opposed to, for example, the UK, where it is sometimes said that there are two-and-half parties, with the Liberal Democrats, Labour, and Conservative party.

EDIT: Additionally, as pointed out in the comments, the Scottish National Party is now the third largest party in the Commons.

According to the OD

the term cross-party does not compete very effectively with the default term bipartisan

So, as a simple answer to your question, no, there is not a simple, widely used term, as the government in America is still mostly divided in two (which makes bipartisan the easy and most effective term to describe the dichotomic nature of American politics.

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