game

plural games

1. A playful or competitive activity.
   1. countableuncountableA playful activity that may be unstructured; an amusement or pastime.

      Being a child is all fun and games.

      Synonyms: amusement, diversion, entertainment, festivity, frolic, fun, gaiety, gambol · Antonyms: drudgery, work, toil

   2. countableAn activity described by a set of rules, especially for the purpose of entertainment, often competitive or having an explicit goal.

      Games in the classroom can make learning fun.

      1 more example

      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

   3. UKcountablein pluraluncountableA school subject during which sports are practised.

      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

   4. countableA particular instance of playing a game.

      Sally won the game.

      2 more examples

      They can turn the game around in the second half.

      “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

      Synonyms: match

   5. countableuncountablehobbiesPart of a set during which one player continuously serves (at least four rallies must be won to win a game, at least six games must be won to win the set).

      Game, set and match!

   6. countableuncountableThat which is gained, such as the stake in a game.
   7. countableuncountableThe number of points necessary to win a game.

      See also: for the win

      1 more example

      In short whist, five points are game, while in in table tennis game is 21 points.

   8. countableuncountablecard gamesIn some games, a point awarded to the player whose cards add up to the largest sum.
   9. countableThe equipment that enables such activity, particularly as packaged under a title.

      Some of the games in the closet we have on the computer as well.

   10. countableuncountableOne's manner, style, or performance in playing a game.

       Study can help your game of chess.

       2 more examples

       Hit the gym if you want to toughen up your game.

       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

   11. abbreviationcountableellipsisEllipsis of video game.

       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

2. countableinformalsingularusuallyA field of gainful activity, as an industry or profession.

   He's in the securities game somehow.

   1 more example

   When it comes to making sales, John is the best in the game.

   Synonyms: line

   1. countableinformalsingularuncountableusuallydancingThe music industry.

      The rapper bragged about how he ran the game.

      Synonyms: line

3. countablefigurativelySomething that resembles a game with rules, despite not being designed.

   In the game of life, you may find yourself playing the waiting game far too often.

   3 more examples

   I ſee you ſtand like Grey-hounds in the ſlips, / Straying vpon the Start. The Game’s afoot:

   1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i], page 77, column 2

   “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

   Hidden behind thickets of acronyms and gorse bushes of detail, a new great game is under way across the globe. Some call it geoeconomics, but it's geopolitics too.

   2013 July 19, Timothy Garton Ash, “Where Dr Pangloss meets Machiavelli”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 6, page 18

4. countablegovernmentAn exercise simulating warfare, whether computerized or involving human participants.

   Synonyms: wargame

5. countableA questionable or unethical practice in pursuit of a goal.

   You want to borrow my credit card for a week? What's your game?

   2 more examples

   Your murderous game is nearly up.

   1845, Blackwood Magazine

   It was obviously Lord Macaulay's game to blacken the greatest literary champion of the cause he had set himself to attack.

   1902, George Saintsbury, Dryden, page 182

   Synonyms: scheme, racket

6. uncountableWild animals hunted for food.

   The forest has plenty of game.

   1 more example

   I had known the President several years before he became famous, and we had had some correspondence on subjects of natural history. His interest in such themes is always very fresh and keen, and the main motive of his visit to the Park at this time was to see and study in its semi-domesticated condition the great game which he had so often hunted during his ranch days; and he was kind enough to think it would be an additional pleasure to see it with a nature-lover like myself.

   1907, John Burroughs, Camping & Tramping with Roosevelt, Houghton Mifflin Company, →OCLC, pages 5–6

7. countableuncountableA flock of swans, especially as kept for hunting purposes (or, originally, a group of any animals kept for such purpose).

   A game of swans flew there and the water and the shore beneath were fouled with their greenwhite slime.

   1916, James Joyce, chapter V, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, →OCLC

8. informaluncountableThe ability to seduce or woo someone, usually by strategy.

   He didn't get anywhere with her because he had no game.

   1 more example

   She's strange, so strange, but I didn't complain / She said yes to me when I ran my game

   1998, “She's Strange”, performed by Nate Dogg

   Synonyms: rizz

9. archaiccountableuncountableLovemaking, flirtation.
10. countableslanguncountableProstitution. (Now chiefly in on the game.)

    ſet them downe, / For ſlottiſh ſpoyles of opportunitie; / And daughters of the game.

    c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene v], lines 61–63

    1 more example

    [H]e put spurs to his horse, and just in the twilight reached the gate, where, at that time, there happened to be two ladies of the game [translating mugeres moças], who being on their journey to Seville, with the carriers, had chanced to take up their night's lodging in this place.

    1755, Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Tobias Smollett, Don Quixote, Volume 1, I.2

11. slanguncountableMastery; the ability to excel at something.

    My dad had game at that kind of thing, and I spent long periods as a child watching him.

    2009, Michael Marshall, Bad Things, →ISBN, page 24

    2 more examples

    What is game? Who got game? / Where's the game in life, behind the game behind the game / I got game, she's got game / We got game, they got game, he got game

    1998, “He Got Game”, performed by Public Enemy

    In the contemporary arts of the academic contact zone, I say African American students got game!

    2005, Kermit Ernest Campbell, Gettin' Our Groove on: Rhetoric, Language, and Literacy for the Hip Hop Generation, →ISBN, page 123

12. archaicuncountableDiversion, entertainment.

    1 more example

    To ſet the minde on the racke of long meditation (you ſay) is a torment: to follow the ſwift foote of your hound alday long, hath no wearineſſe: what would you ſay of him that finds better game in his ſtudie, then you in the fielde, and would account your diſport his puniſhment? ſuch there are, though you doubt and wonder.

    1611, Joseph Hall, “Epistle VIII. To E.B. Dedicated to Sir George Goring.”, in Epistles […], volume III, London: […] [William Stansby and William Jaggard] for Samuell Macham, […], →OCLC, 5th decade, pages 95–96

comparative gamer · superlative gamest

1. colloquialWilling and able to participate.

   "[…] But what’s this long face about, Mr. Starbuck; wilt thou not chase the white whale? art not game for Moby Dick?”

   1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter 36, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 180

   2 more examples

   One Friday when I jumped into my barber’s chair to get a trim, she suggested I try a jheri curl. I was game, despite the fact that most of the women I knew hated jheri curls on men and called men who wore them “bamas,” a term short for Alabamas, which meant real country.

   2003 August, E. Lynn Harris, chapter 9, in What Becomes of the Brokenhearted: A Memoir, New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, →ISBN, pages 126–127

   Some of Grimsby’s other (extraordinarily up-to-date) targets include Donald Trump and Daniel Radcliffe, whose fates here are too breath-catchingly cruel to spoil, and also the admirably game Strong, whose character is beset by a constant stream of humiliations that hit with the force of a jet of…well, you’ll see.

   2016 February 23, Robbie Collin, “Grimsby review: ' Sacha Baron Cohen's vital, venomous action movie'”, in The Daily Telegraph (London)

   Synonyms: sporting, willing, daring, disposed, favorable, nervy, courageous, valiant · Antonyms: cautious, disinclined

2. That shows a tendency to continue to fight against another animal, despite being wounded, often severely.
3. Persistent, especially in senses similar to the above.

present singular third person games · participle present gaming · participle past gamed · past gamed

1. intransitiveTo gamble.

   an impressive protest against gaming, swearing, and all immoral practices which might forfeit divine aid in the great struggle for National Independence

   1898, “George Washington: Statesman, Christian Gentleman”, in Suggestive programs for special day exercises

2. intransitiveTo play card games, board games, or video games.

   “The first few days after getting here are weird. It’s a version of cold turkey because you’ve been gaming around the clock and suddenly, nothing. […]”

   2017 June 16, Joanna Walters, “Inside the rehab saving young men from their internet addiction”, in The Guardian

3. transitiveTo exploit loopholes in a system or bureaucracy in a way which defeats or nullifies the spirit of the rules in effect, usually to obtain a result which otherwise would be unobtainable.

   We'll bury them in paperwork, and game the system.

   3 more examples

   A large batch of online trolls have gamed a web contest that promises a Taylor Swift performance at any school in the US. The target? Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

   2012 August 31, Amanda Holpuch, “Trolls game Taylor Swift competition in favor of school for the hearing impaired”, in The Guardian

   “Amazon risks betraying the trust millions of customers place in the Amazon’s Choice badge by allowing its endorsement to be all too easily gamed,” said Which?’s Natalie Hitchins.

   2020 February 6, Alex Hern, quoting Natalie Hitchins, “Amazon Choice label is being 'gamed to promote poor products'”, in The Guardian

   It is an example of what real entrepreneurship can do on the railway, but sadly there are not many other examples. Most of the private sector businesses in rail are simply 'gaming' the system, trying to outdo or outthink the regulator and the Government in order to generate profit.

   2023 January 25, Christian Wolmar, “An informative cab ride on the state of the railway”, in RAIL, number 975, page 34

4. slangtransitivelifestyleTo perform premeditated seduction strategy.

   A business associate of mine at the time, George Wu, sat across the way, gaming a stripper the way I taught him.

   2010, Mystery, The Pickup Artist: The New and Improved Art of Seduction, Villard Books, →ISBN, page 100

   2 more examples

   Returning briefly to his journalistic persona to interview Britney Spears, he finds himself gaming her, and she gives him her phone number.

   2005 October 6, “Picking up the pieces”, in The Economist

   How did Amanda know she wasn’t getting gamed? Well, she didn’t. “I would wonder, ‘Is he saying stuff to other girls that he says to me?’ We did everything we could to cut it off […] yet we somehow couldn’t.”

   2010 July 9, Sheila McClear, “Would you date a pickup artist?”, in New York Post

comparative more game · superlative most game

1. Injured, lame.

   You come with me and we'll have a cozy dinner and a pleasant talk together, and by that time your game ankle will carry you home very nicely, I am sure."

   1906 April, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “Lost on Dress Parade”, in The Four Million, New York, N.Y.: McClure, Phillips & Co, →OCLC

   1 more example

   He was done for, all right. I took out my six-shooter and aimed right between his eyes. He kicked once, sort of leaped—or tried to, and then lay still. I stood there a minute, to see if he had to have another. He was so game that, some way, I didn’t want to give him more than he needed.

   1930, Edna Ferber, Cimarron, page 29