What exactly is a cornish cross?

No, the lines of birds developed for commercial use and sold to us as day olds from hatcheries are a synthetic blend, usually of four parent lines, developed to provide the terminal chick we purchase. The original "Cornish cross" is obsolete, but the name remains in use by the hatcheries.
 
Is it just a cornish hen crossed with any other male or a specific breed of male?

The Cornish Cross chicken is a cross between the Cornish chicken and a White Plymouth Rock chicken. Sometimes they call them Cornish Rocks.

I do not know about the commercial chickens.
 
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The original cross is Cornish/Plymouth, but the 'Cornish Cross' chickens today are far developed beyond that original crossing. If you were to perform the cross yourself, you'd get a good meat bird that can free-range and develops to meat capacity within the first year of life. I'd highly recommend doing the original cross, as free-ranging improves meat taste drastically.

The genetics in modern 'Cornish Crosses' leads to a very unfortunate animal that reaches it's harvesting weight at 8 weeks or so, and often cannot survive much past that point, or breed on it's own. I personally can't stand even looking at them because I feel they're such a violation of good animal stewardship. Just my opinion and personal view of them though.
 

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