Word.ws English Dictionary

only game in town

only game in town noun: the only opportunity, activity, or resource available.

only game in town: the only opportunity, activity, or resource available
Image: Ralf Roletschek, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

only game in town (plural only games in town)

  1. (idiomatic, almost always preceded by the) The only opportunity, activity, or resource available.
    • It was the first elected position he had ever held, his single incumbency and, he had to admit, his best prospect, the only game in town.1973, Stanley Elkin, Searches & Seizures: Three Novellas, Boston, Mass.: Nonpareil Books, David R. Godine, Publisher, →ISBN, page 265
    • Java won't long be the only game in town. Microsoft already plans to publish a rival software, code-named Blackbird.1995 November 12, Adam Rogers, “Now for some Hotjava”, in Newsweek, retrieved 01 Jan 2014

Examples of only game in town in a sentence

  • When exports are the only game in town, currency gyrations can be a killer.1999 December 12, “Will the yen's surge do Japan in?”, in BusinessWeek, retrieved 01 Jan 2014:
  • […]the underlying message for Britons is relentless: raw capitalism is the only game in town, and you need to start working much harder.2012 August 22, Andy Beckett, “Britannia Unchained: the rise of the new Tory right”, in The Guardian:
  • Political power, after all, is the only game in town that ensures unfettered access to the nation's oil riches.2013 October 24, Adewale Maja-Pearce, “Nigeria's talking shop”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 29 Oct 2013:

Forms of only game in town

pluralonly games in town

Origin of only game in town

An allusion to a gambling venue.

Questions about only game in town

What does only game in town mean?
Only game in town means the only opportunity, activity, or resource available.
How do you use only game in town in a sentence?
When exports are the only game in town, currency gyrations can be a killer.
What part of speech is only game in town?
Only game in town is a noun.
What is the plural of only game in town?
The plural of only game in town is only games in town.

Words near only game in town in the dictionary

  1. only children
  2. only daughter
  3. only daughters
  4. only dead fish go with the flow
  5. only fools and horses work
  6. only game in town
  7. only games in town
  8. only if
  9. only in Ohio
  10. only just
  11. only move

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: only game in town (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-only game in town.ogg.

Cite this entry: “only game in town.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/only_game_in_town. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.