Word.ws English Dictionary

role play

role play is the alternative form of roleplay.

Meaning of roleplay

Verb

roleplay (third-person singular simple present roleplays, present participle roleplaying, simple past and past participle roleplayed)

  1. (intransitive) To act out a scenario or fantasy with another person or other people.
    • To spice up their sex life, they like to roleplay.
  2. (transitive) To act as a character as part of a fantasy, especially with a group.
    • He likes to roleplay a vampire.
  3. (intransitive, transitive) To act out a social role, especially one that one does not truly belong to.
    • He talks like he's some scrappy bootstrap entrepreneur but he's just some old money rich kid roleplaying.

See all 5 meanings of roleplay

Forms of role play

Verb
third-person singular presentrole plays
present participlerole playing
past participlerole played
pastrole played
Noun
pluralrole plays

Questions about role play

What is role play the alternative form of?
Role play is the alternative form of roleplay.

Words near role play in the dictionary

  1. role activity diagrams
  2. role conflict
  3. role conflicts
  4. role model
  5. role models
  6. role play
  7. role played
  8. role player
  9. role players
  10. role playing
  11. role playing game

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: role play (page history and authors); roleplay (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.

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Cite this entry: “role play.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/role_play. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.