player
noun
Simple meaning
Someone who plays any game or sport.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
playerSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈpleɪɚ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
One who plays any game or sport.
music
One who plays on a musical instrument.
gamingvideo games
A gamer; a person of video games or similar.
One who is playful; one without serious aims; an idler; a trifler.
One who participates in a particular type of sexual play.
informal
A person who plays the field rather than having a long-term sexual relationship.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: One who plays any game or sport.
Used this way, player is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. This is a sporting use: familiar to anyone who follows the game, and puzzling to anyone who does not.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Sports
- News/reporting
- Everyday conversation
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use player
- “He was a major player in setting up the corporation.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Participate in games or sport.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Full of fun and high spirits.
Capable of or suitable for being played or played on.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
An athlete who plays basketball.
Someone who plays billiards.
A card player in a game of bridge.
Someone who plays (or knows how to play) card games.
Electronic equipment for playing cassettes.
A stand-alone piece of electronic equipment that either has its own display or attaches to a television set.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
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Words can change meaning depending on context.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.