wordplay

«wordplay» in Mova's school dictionary: a clever or funny use of words, such as puns, rhymes or… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 1 sentence of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (wordplay; uncountable)

meaning for a pupil

Wordplay is a clever or funny use of words, such as puns, rhymes or words with two meanings. tree →

sense in the lessons

Used in English lessons and jokes: puns, riddles, tongue twisters, spoonerisms, crossword clues; writers like Roald Dahl and Lewis Carroll use a lot of wordplay.

examples

• The joke «Why was six afraid of seven? Because seven eight nine» uses wordplay. tree →
• Roald Dahl loved wordplay and invented new words. tree →
• The riddle depended on wordplay. tree →
• Crossword clues often use wordplay. tree →
• Our class wrote poems full of wordplay. tree →
• The comedian's wordplay made everyone groan and laugh. tree →

note

Uncountable: «a lot of wordplay», not «wordplays». A single example is «a pun» or «a play on words».

In the corpora

• Rap uses rhythm, rhyme and wordplay, so it is a kind of poetry.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «wordplay» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.