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say it: gaym
game is a noun, adjective and verb meaning "a contest with rules to determine a winner". It is pronounced /ˈɡeɪm/ — gaym. It carries 14 recorded senses.
a contest with rules to determine a winner
“you need four people to play this game”
a single play of a sport or other contest
“the game lasted two hours”
game
an amusement or pastime
“they played word games”
“he thought of his painting as a game that filled his empty time”
“his life was all fun and games”
(games) the score at a particular point or the score needed to win
“the game is 6 all”
“he is serving for the game”
game
a secret scheme to do something (especially something underhand or illegal)
“they concocted a plot to discredit the governor”
“I saw through his little game from the start”
the game equipment needed in order to play a particular game
“the child received several games for his birthday”
game
your occupation or line of work
“he's in the plumbing game”
“she's in show biz”
colloquialism
frivolous or trifling behavior
“for actors, memorizing lines is no game”
“for him, life is all fun and games”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for game come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.