Word.ws English Dictionary

wordplay

wordplay noun: a humorous play on words; such plays on words collectively.

Noun

wordplay (countable and uncountable, plural wordplays)

  1. A humorous play on words; such plays on words collectively.
    • Even this modest wordplay was an outlier: Sagers counted only three backronyms across the ’70s and ’80s.2022 November 12, Matteo Wong, “How Did America End Up With the Z.O.M.B.I.E. Act?”, in The Atlantic, archived from the original on 12 Nov 2022
  2. A witty verbal exchange; such exchanges collectively.
  3. (crosswording) The part of a cryptic clue that indicates but does not define the solution.
    • delete the T from another part in the wordplay2012 June 13, Denise Sutherland, Solving Cryptic Crosswords For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 105
    • However, some clues include words that do not form part of the wordplay or the definition.2014, Henry Howarth, Learn How to Solve Cryptic Crosswords: A Course for Beginners, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 59

wordplay meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Vietnamese

wordplay in Tamil

சொல்லாட்டம், வார்த்தை விளையாட்டு, சொல்லாடல்

wordplay in Urdu

حاضر جوابی, نوک جھونک

wordplay in Malayalam

puns, punning, play on words
പദലീല, ശ്ലേഷംവച്ചു പറയൽ, ദ്വയാർത്ഥപ്രയോഗം, ഫലിതം, തമാശ, നർമ്മം

wordplay in Vietnamese

humorous play on words
chơi chữ

Examples of wordplay in a sentence

  • Back-formations, such as tambour (for “play the tambourine”), are a staple of comedic wordplay.
  • “You’ll often find prompt engineers come from a history, philosophy, or English language background, because it’s wordplay.
  • However, some clues include words that do not form part of the wordplay or the definition.

All 12 example sentences with wordplay

Synonyms of wordplay

Forms of wordplay

pluralwordplays

Plural of wordplay: wordplays

Origin of wordplay

From word + play.

Questions about wordplay

What does wordplay mean?
Wordplay means a humorous play on words; such plays on words collectively.
What is wordplay in Tamil?
Wordplay in Tamil is சொல்லாட்டம், வார்த்தை விளையாட்டு, சொல்லாடல். See Wordplay meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is wordplay?
Wordplay is a noun.
What is the plural of wordplay?
The plural of wordplay is wordplays.

Words near wordplay in the dictionary

  1. wordniks
  2. wordoid
  3. wordoids
  4. wordoku
  5. wordology
  6. wordplay
  7. wordplayer
  8. wordplayers
  9. wordplayfully
  10. wordplays
  11. wordpool

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wordplay (page history and authors); wordplay (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); wordplay (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); wordplay (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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: “wordplay.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wordplay. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.