Other forms: games
A game is an activity with rules that you play to win and for fun. Play a game, a board game, the game starts at three.
It also means one contest within a match — in tennis a set is made of games — and the whole field of an activity: the property game, the oldest game there is. Game as an adjective means willing: I am game. And game is wild animals hunted for food: game birds, a game pie. Note gamer, game plan, give the game away, and that ahead of the game means in a better position than others.
1noungameAn activity with rules played for fun or to win.~96%
“Let's play a game of cards after dinner.”
2nounwildWild animals hunted for food.~2%
“The estate is managed for game and nothing else.”
3adjectivetryWilling to try something.~2%
“She was game for it and nobody else was.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 20 sentences found in the wild and placed 20 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
game is a played activity.
Old English gamen meant joy or amusement, and the second syllable wore away in Middle English — which is why game and gammon are relatives. The root idea is people together, so a game began as company rather than competition.
Middle English
game
English, today
game
Built from
From Middle 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- + mann- (“man”); or alternatively from ga- + a root from Proto-Indo-European men- (“to think, have in mind”). Cognate with yol 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.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA