at a crossroads

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

at a critical decision point where choices made will determine the direction of future events and where different possible futures diverge irrevocably; the image is of a physical crossroads where travellers must choose a direction — the different roads leading to fundamentally different destinations — applied to moments in personal, organisational, or historical life where the stakes of the choice are high and the paths not taken will be permanently foreclosed; crossroads carry mythological weight across many cultures, associated with boundary-crossing, transformation, and encounters with the divine or supernatural — in West African and African American tradition the crossroads is the domain of the trickster deity Papa Legba or the legendary bluesman's bargain — lending the phrase resonance beyond its practical navigational meaning