- 1命運多舛的、被命運拆散的（多用於情侶）；「星象不合」的說法。中文常譯「苦命鴛鴦」，但注意英文不含「可憐、沒錢」的意思，重點是命運作對。
Star-crossed describes people — almost always lovers — whose situation is set against them from the start, so the happy ending was never really possible. The idea behind it is old : your life is written in the stars, and if the stars are crossed, badly placed, then no matter how much the two people love each other, something outside them will pull them apart. Families, war, illness, timing, death.
It is important that the trouble comes from outside. If two people simply argue too much and break up, that is not star-crossed — that is just a bad relationship. Star-crossed means the love itself is fine; the world around it is not.
The word is literary and slightly dramatic. Nobody says it about their own life without smiling a little. You meet it in book reviews, film , and newspaper headlines about doomed romances, and in the fixed phrase 'star-crossed lovers'. Sports writers stretch it to teams that always lose at the last moment, which is a loose use, but a common one.
star-crossed 是形容詞，用來說兩個人，幾乎都是情侶，他們的處境從一開始就跟他們作對，所以快樂的結局本來就不太可能。這個想法來自古老的占星術：人的命運寫在星星裡，若星星位置不好，就算兩個人彼此相愛，外面的力量也會把他們拆開。家庭、戰爭、疾病、時機，或死亡，都可能是這股力量。
這裡要注意，麻煩要來自外部。如果兩個人只是常常吵架而分手，那只是段不好的關係，不叫 star-crossed。它的意思是愛情本身沒有問題，是外面的世界出了問題。中文常譯作「苦命鴛鴦」，但英文不是說他們可憐或沒錢，重點是命運在作對。
這個字偏文學，也有點戲劇化，常在書評、電影簡介或講悲劇愛情的報紙標題中見到，最常見的固定說法是「star-crossed lovers」。體育記者也會拿來形容總在最後關頭輸掉的球隊，那是比較寬鬆的用法，但也常見。
From the word’s history
Compound of star + crossed, coined by William Shakespeare in 1597 in Romeo and Juliet.
由 star 加 crossed 組成，莎士比亞在《羅密歐與茱麗葉》首創。
組成star + crossed. 'Crossed' here does not mean angry, and it does not mean crossing a road — it is the old sense of being thwarted, blocked, gone against. So: the stars go against you. Shakespeare made the word up for Romeo and Juliet in 1597, in the line about 'a pair of star-cross'd lovers'. It has never really escaped that play.
原始詞典資料1 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
star-crossedadj/ˈstɑːˌkɹɒst/
- 1
Ill-fated by destiny, the fate of the person being “written in the stars”.
- The star-crossed lovers looked into each other's eyes, before dying.
- From forth the fatall loynes of theſe two foes, / A paire of ſtarre-crost Louers tooke their life:
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。