Other forms: played, playing, plays
To play is to do something for the fun of it — no goal, no marks, nothing to hand in at the end. Two kids and a ball in the street, a dog dragging a chewed slipper across the carpet, a toddler tipping bricks out of a box and putting them back.
Play stretches a long way past the playground. You play football and you play chess, so it covers sport and games with rules. You play an instrument — play the piano, play the drums — and you play a record or a film, which is why every screen has a play button on it. In a theatre, a play is the thing on stage, and in a film you play a part, meaning you act it. As a noun it also means the fun itself: children learn through play. One trap for British English — you play football and play tennis, but you do judo and you go swimming.
1verbplayTo do something for enjoyment, with no purpose beyond the enjoyment.~5%
“The children played in the garden until it got dark.”
2verbtakeTo take part in a game or a sport.~42%
“We play football on the field behind the school every Saturday.”
3verbmusicTo make music on an instrument.~2%
“She has played the cello since she was six.”
4verbrecordingTo make a recording produce sound or pictures.~9%
“He played the message twice to be sure of the address.”
5verbactTo act a part in a film, a programme or a stage show.~2%
“She plays the mother in the new adaptation.”
6nounstoryA story written to be performed by actors on a stage.~38%
“The play ran for three hours with one interval.”
7nounactivityActivity done for enjoyment, especially by children.~2%
“Small children learn a great deal through play.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 23 sentences found in the wild and placed 20 of them on a sense (3 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Play comes from Old English plegian, 'to play, exercise', and behind that a Proto-West Germanic root meaning 'to care about, be concerned with'. The same family gave German pflegen, 'to care for', and Dutch plegen, 'to practise' — so the line runs from tending something carefully to leaping about for joy. Where the root itself came from, nobody has settled.
Middle English
pleyen
English, today
play
Built from
From Middle English pleyen. From Middle English pleyen and Middle English pleye, from Old English plegian and plegan, plagian (“to play, exercise, etc.”), from Proto-West Germanic plehan (“to care about, be concerned with”) and Proto-West Germanic plegōn (“to engage, move”), of uncertain origin. 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA