Definition
nounA playful or competitive activity.
nounA playful or competitive activity., A playful activity that may be unstructured; an amusement or pastime.
Sentence Examples
Did you watch the game?
Your team doesn't have a prayer to win the championship game.
The kids were playing a game with their balloons.
Word Origin & History
Etymology tree
Proto-Germanic *gamaną
Proto-West Germanic *gaman
Old English gamen
Middle English game
English game
From Middle English game, gamen, gammen, from Old English gamen (“sport, joy, mirth, pastime, game, amusement, pleasure”), from Proto-West Germanic *gaman, from Proto-Germanic *gamaną (“amusement, pleasure, game", literally "participation, communion, people together”), from *ga- (collective prefix) + *mann- (“man”); or alternatively from *ga- + a root from Proto-Indo-European *men- (“to think, have in mind”).
Cognate with Yola gaame, gaaume, gaume (“game”), Old Frisian game, gome (“joy, amusement, entertainment”), Dutch gemelijk (“cantankerous, crabbed”), Middle High German gamen (“joy, amusement, fun, pleasure”), Danish gammen (“merriment”), Icelandic, Norwegian Nynorsk gaman (“joy, fun”), Swedish gamman (“mirth, rejoicing, merriment”). Related to gammon, gamble.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Joshua: Shall we play a game?
David: ... Love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War?
Joshua: Wouldn't you prefer a good game of chess?
David: Later. Let's play Global Thermonuclear War.
Joshua: Fine."
— 1983, Lawrence Lasker et al., WarGames:
"From time to time tracksuited boys ran past them, with all the deadly purpose and humourless concentration of those who enjoyed Games."
— 1991 September, Stephen Fry, chapter 1, in The Liar, London: Heinemann, →ISBN, section III, page 26:
"“I'm through with all pawn-games,” I laughed. “Come, let us have a game of lansquenet. Either I will take a farewell fall out of you or you will have your sevenfold revenge”."
— 1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, chapter I, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:
"I played golf with her that same afternoon. She lost eight balls, I remember. Eight. I had a terrible time getting her to at least open her eyes when she took a swing at the ball. I improved her game immensely, though."
— 1951 July 16, J[erome] D[avid] Salinger, chapter 11, in The Catcher in the Rye, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →OCLC:
"There’s a sense here, as well as in games such as Limbo, that we’re making ourselves experience our children’s reality, trapped in the chaos that the adults have created."
— 2019 May 8, Jon Bailes, “Save yourself! The video games casting us as helpless children”, in The Guardian: