game

Meanings

Noun

• A playful or competitive activity.
• Lovemaking, flirtation.
• Prostitution. (Now chiefly in on the game.)
• A field of gainful activity, as an industry or profession.
• Something that resembles a game with rules, despite not being designed.
• An exercise simulating warfare, whether computerized or involving human participants.
• Wild animals hunted for food.
• The ability to seduce someone, usually by strategy.
• Mastery; the ability to excel at something.
• A questionable or unethical practice in pursuit of a goal.

Adjective

• Willing to participate.
• That shows a tendency to continue to fight against another animal, despite being wounded, often severely.
• Persistent, especially in senses similar to the above.
• Injured, lame (of a limb).

Verb

• To gamble.
• To play card games, board games, or video games.
• To 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.
• To perform premeditated seduction strategy.

Origin

• 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- + *mann-; or alternatively from *ga- + a root from Proto-Indo-European *men- ("to think, have in mind").
• Cognate with Old Frisian game, gome, Middle High German gamen, Swedish gamman, Icelandic gaman. Related to gammon, gamble.