player

noun

play·​er ˈplā-ər 

: one that plays: such as

a

: a person who plays a game

a baseball player

a chess player

She's one of the team's best players.

b

: a person who plays a musical instrument

a piano player

c

: actor

… what drew these audiences was the emergence of the movie star from the ranks of the wholly anonymous players of a decade earlier.

—David Nasaw

d

: a device that reproduces recorded material (such as video images or music) from a usually specified medium

a CD player

e

: one actively involved especially in a competitive field or process : participant

a key player in politics

f

or less commonly playa US slang : a person and especially a man who has many lovers

Handsome and a well-paid professional, Keith, 35, chose to be a player, juggling a series of relatively brief and sometimes over-lapping intimate relationships with women.

—Michel Marriott

This album has a lot of sexual references. It's almost like Bobby's … a playa.

—Elliott Wilson

Note: The variant playa is more common in transcribed speech.

Synonyms

• instrumentalist
• musician

Examples of player in a Sentence

She's one of the team's best players.

The band's lead guitar player hurt his hand and couldn't play.

Piano players are called pianists.

Recent Examples on the Web

McKinney also became the first player in team history to register an interception in each of his first five games in a Green Bay uniform. —Rob Reischel, Forbes, 2 Jan. 2025

The more amazing part is the player directly ahead of him in third place is … Johnson. —John Hollinger, The Athletic, 1 Jan. 2025

Exposition comes out in brief two-sentence exchanges between pitches and longer asides between innings, allowing audiences to experience the game with the same cadence that the players do. —Kate Erbland, IndieWire, 1 Jan. 2025

But Jackson brings a very different argument as the most statistically efficient player in the league this year. —Jackson Thompson, Fox News, 1 Jan. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined above

Phrases Containing player

• bit player
• most valuable player
• non-player character
• player piano
• record player
• tape player
• team player

Kids Definition

player

noun

play·​er ˈplā-ər 

1

a

: a person who plays a game

b

: musician

c

: actor

2

: a device for playing recorded material (as music)

an MP3 player