querschnittlichen

Querschnittlich is a German adjective meaning related to or characteristic of a cross-section. The form querschnittlichen is one inflected version used when the adjective describes plural nouns or appears in cases where the determiner requires the ending -en. The base noun from which it derives is Querschnitt, meaning cross-section. The adverbial form is querschnittlich, as in querschnittlich betrachtet, and the related noun Querschnitt denotes the cross-section itself.

In technical and scientific writing, querschnittlich is used to describe properties, analyses, or views tied to cross-sections. Common contexts include geometry and engineering (cross-sectional shape, area, or moment of inertia), architecture and materials science (querschnittliche Eigenschaften of a component), and medicine or biology when referring to cross-sectional planes or slices. It also appears in discussions of data types, for example querschnittliche Daten (cross-sectional data) in research designs that analyze a snapshot in time.

Etymologically, querschnittlich is formed from Querschnitt (cross-section) and the suffix -lich, which yields an adjective meaning “cross-sectional.” In grammar, querschnittlichen is the attributive plural form with the -en ending, used after definite determiners or in strong declensions in plural contexts (e.g., die querschnittlichen Eigenschaften, der querschnittlichen Eigenschaften, den querschnittlichen Eigenschaften). The term can function across multiple disciplines, always tied to the concept of a cross-section and its properties or representations.