Word.ws English Dictionary

word play

word play noun: used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see word, play.

Noun

word play (countable and uncountable, plural word plays)

  1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see word, play.
  2. A technique in which the nature of the words used become part of the subject of the work, such as puns, phonetic mix-ups such as spoonerisms, obscure words and meanings, clever rhetorical excursions, oddly formed sentences, and telling character names.

Forms of word play

pluralword plays

Questions about word play

What does word play mean?
Word play means used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see word, play.
What part of speech is word play?
Word play is a noun.
What is the plural of word play?
The plural of word play is word plays.

Words near word play in the dictionary

  1. word orders
  2. word painter
  3. word painters
  4. word painting
  5. word paintings
  6. word play
  7. word plays
  8. word problem
  9. word problems
  10. word process
  11. word processed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: word play (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: “word play.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/word_play. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.