Definitions of the Word Play
(MENTAL TEMPLATES - PLAY'S THE THING)
NATIONAL CHILDREN'S FOLKSONG REPOSITORY
The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren
One by one, all the books I wish I had time to write get written. Sometimes, after they come out, I still wish I’d done them myself, but not this one. It is a model of folklore collecting and like so much of the best folklorism in all countries, it seems to have been done by a couple with no great scholarly standing at least previously and with no Scholarships, s, Fellowships, Funds or Bourses. If the Fords or the Rockefellers or the Bollingens or the Guggenheims had financed this they’d be passing it around the office right now and they’d all be as proud and happy as mud larks.
This is not a collection of material of the Mother Goose type folk poetry which adults teach children. It is all child-originated culture tthe skip rope songs, counting out rhymes, parodies, singing verses, superstitions, of children themselves. There is nothing like it in English that comes close to being as extensive. The work of Dorothy [name illegible] and Patricia Evans in America is more intensive, but so far they have not equaled the Opies in bulk, or in geographic range. Sixty-three elementary schools, scattered evenly across the British Isles from northern Scotland to Land’s End, contributed material [illegible word] for several years. The Opies corresponded extensively with both students and teachers and visited a large number of the schools. Besides this, their acknowledgment pages list hundreds of individual informants and secondary sources.
It might be thought that most of these jingles and jokes and customs would be specially and peculiarly British. Indeed they are not. The hidden civilization of childhood is close to being at least Pan-European. The specific customs and poems are spread throughout the English-speaking world. Not only are they spread, they do spread right now. Parodies of the Davy Crockett song not only jump the Atlantic from Maryland to Shropshire, they leap the Pacific and appear in Australia within a couple months.
The child world is a coherent primitive culture lying right at our door. I do not accept the Lévy-Bruhl hypothesis. I know primitive people are not childlike but children are cultural primmitives. Some aspects of their ways find parallel in barbaric cultures, some in hunting and gathering cultures, others appear as traces in our own Neolithic. Irrespective of their values for culture history, they have a far greater value for us as being the immediate roots of contemporary culture. Moreover, since the activities of children are confined for the most part to very small ranges of age sixth graders despise the games and jingles of fourth graderss many culture processes are greatly accelerated, and can be studied as we study heredity with fruit flies. On the other hand, children seem extraordinarily conservative: stale jokes, trick conundrums, bits of doggerel, can be traced back with little change to Elizabethan times. Also, childhood holiday activities preserve some of the most ancient rites and customs of the European peoples.
A discussion of the poetic virtues of these jingles would have to be complex and subtle; it would run to many pages. Sufficient to say that they embody not only psychological and historical sources of poetry, but in many instances exhibit the fundamentals of poetic stimulus and response. One of the best collections of this type is Claude Roy, Trésor de la Poésie Populaire, published by Seghers, which also includes the bulk of French Mother Goose poetry. Roy himself has been greatly influenced by such poetry, but so has almost every other French poet of importance from Supervielle to Yves Bonnefoy. We know the great prevalence of such influences in German literature, beginning of course with Goethe. Faust itself, shall we say, is one enormous skip rope and counting out rhyme? W.H. Auden introduced the mode into contemporary English poetry, but it never seems to have properly caught on. Possibly American poets do not care to use this material, but even so they should know it thoroughly. And so should children. There are a couple of scandalous chapters on pranks and jokes which my two little girls devoured with glee.
As a concluding note, I should mention that the Opies are also the authors of The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes and The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book. I would say that these three books are an essential part of the library for every student of culture, anthropologist or other, and for every serious student or practitioner of the art of letters.
KENNETH REXROTH
April 1960
April 1960
This review of Iona and Peter Opie’s The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (Oxford University Press, 1959) originally appeared in The Nation (9 April 1960). Copyright 1960. Reprinted here by permission of the Kenneth Rexroth Trust.
- play
by electronic mail
<games> A kind of game where the players use electronic mail to communicate. This may be done via a human moderator or an automatic mailing list exploder on some central machine or it may be fully distributed with each player just addressing his mail to all other players.
This is a natural extension of "play by mail" games conducted via snail mail.
MORE. Usenet newsgroup: rec.games.pbm. - Inglish
<games> An English-like language used for Adventure games like "The Hobbit". Inglish could distinguish between "take the rope and axe" and "take the money and run". (27 Jun 1995) - playground
A visual language for children, developed for Apple's Vivarium Project. OOPSLA 89 or 90? - playpen (IBM) A room where programmers work.
- salt
mines
Dense quarters housing large numbers of programmers working long hours on grungy projects, with some hope of seeing the end of the tunnel in N years. Noted for their absence of sunshine. Compare playpen, sandbox. - Play
(Page: 1097)
Play (?), v. i. [imp. & p. p. Played (?); p. pr. & vb. n. Playing.]
[OE. pleien, AS. plegian, plegan, to play, akin to plega play, game, quick motion, and probably to OS.
plegan to promise, pledge, D. plegen to care for, attend to, be wont, G. pflegen; of unknown origin. root;28. Cf. Plight, n.]
- 1.
To engage in sport or lively recreation; to exercise for the sake of amusement;
to frolic; to spot.
As Cannace was playing in her walk.
Chaucer.
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, Had he thy reason, would he skip and play! Pope.
And some, the darlings of their Lord, Play smiling with the flame and sword. Keble. - 2.
To act with levity or thoughtlessness; to trifle; to be careless.
Nay," quod this monk, I have no lust to pleye." Chaucer.
Men are apt to play with their healths. Sir W. Temple. - 3. To contend, or take part, in a game; as, to play ball; hence, to gamble; as, he played for heavy stakes.
- 4.
To perform on an instrument of music; as, to play on a flute.
One that . . . can play well on an instrument. Ezek. xxxiii. 32.
Play, my friend, and charm the charmer. Granville. - 5.
To act; to behave; to practice deception.
His mother played false with a smith. Shak. - 6.
To move in any manner; especially, to move regularly with alternate or
reciprocating motion; to operate; to act; as, the fountain plays.
The heart beats, the blood circulates, the lungs play. Cheyne. - 7.
To move gayly; to wanton; to disport.
Even as the waving sedges play with wind. Shak.
The setting sun Plays on their shining arms and burnished helmets. Addison.
All fame is foreign but of true desert, Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart. Pope. - 8.
To act on the stage; to personate a character.
A lord will hear your play to-night. Shak.
Courts are theaters where some men play. Donne. - To
play into a person's hands, to act, or to manage matters, to his advantage
or benefit.
-- To play off, to affect; to feign; to practice artifice.
-- To play upon.
(a) To make sport of; to deceive.
Art thou alive? Or is it fantasy that plays upon our eyesight. Shak.
(b) To use in a droll manner; to give a droll expression or application to; as, to play upon words.
Play (Page: 1097)
Play, v. t.
- 1.
To put in action or motion; as, to play cannon upon a fortification; to
play a trump.
First Peace and Silence all disputes control, Then Order plays the soul. Herbert. - 2. To perform music upon; as, to play the flute or the organ.
- 3. To perform, as a piece of music, on an instrument; as, to play a waltz on the violin.
- 4.
To bring into sportive or wanton action; to exhibit in action; to execute;
as, to play tricks.
Nature here Wantoned as in her prime, and played at will Her virgin fancies. Milton. - 5.
To act or perform (a play); to represent in music action; as, to play
a comedy; also, to act in the character of; to represent by acting; to
simulate; to behave like; as, to play King Lear; to play the woman.
Thou canst play the rational if thou wilt. Sir W. Scott. - 6. To engage in, or go together with, as a contest for amusement or for a wager or prize; as, to play a game at baseball.
- 7.
To keep in play, as a hooked fish, in order to land it. To play off, to
display; to show; to put in exercise; as, to play off tricks.
-- To play one's cards, to manage one's means or opportunities; to contrive. -- Played out, tired out; exhausted; at the end of one's resources. [Colloq.]
Play (Page: 1097)
Play, n.
- 1. Amusement; sport; frolic; gambols.
- 2.
Any exercise, or series of actions, intended for amusement or diversion;
a game.
John naturally loved rough play. Arbuthnot. - 3. The act or practice of contending for victory, amusement, or a prize, as at dice, cards, or billiards; gaming; as, to lose a fortune in play.
- 4. Action; use; employment; exercise; practice; as, fair play; sword play; a play of wit. The next who comes in play." Dryden.
- 5.
A dramatic composition; a comedy or tragedy; a composition in which characters
are represented by dialogue and action.
A play ought to be a just image of human nature. Dryden. - 6. The representation or exhibition of a comedy or tragedy; as, he attends ever play.
- 7. Performance on an instrument of music.
- 8.
Motion; movement, regular or irregular; as, the play of a wheel or piston;
hence, also, room for motion; free and easy action. To give them play,
front and rear." Milton.
The joints are let exactly into one another, that they have no play between them. Moxon. - 9. Hence, liberty of acting; room for enlargement or display; scope; as, to give full play to mirth. Play actor, an actor of dramas.
- Prynne. -- Play debt, a gambling debt.
- Arbuthnot. -- Play pleasure, idle amusement. [Obs.]
- Bacon.
-- A play upon words, the use of a word in such a way as to be capable of double meaning; punning.
-- Play of colors, prismatic variation of colors.
-- To bring into play, To come into play, to bring or come into use or exercise.
-- To hold in play, to keep occupied or employed. - Macaulay --I, with two more to help me, Will hold the foe in play.
Generated
on: Sat Mar 29 09:26:49 CST 1997
Mark
Olsen, ARTFL Project, mark at gide.uchicago.edu
Gavin LaRowe, ARTFL Project, gavin at tuna.uchicago.edu
SENSES OF THE WORD PLAY
- * word play -- (playing on words or speech sounds)
- * pun, punning, wordplay -- (a humorous play on words; ``I do it for the pun of it'' )
- looseness, play -- (movement or space for movement; ``there was too much play in the steering wheel'' )
- * wiggliness
- * slack, slackness
play, child's play -- play by children that is guided more by imagination than by fixed rules; ``Freud believed in the utility of play to a small child''
- * house -- (play in which children take the roles of father or mother or children and pretend to interact like adults; ``the children were playing house'' )
- * doctor -- children take the roles of doctor or patient or nurse and pretend they are at the doctor's office; ``the children explored each other's bodies by playing the game of doctor''
- *
fireman -- (play in which children take the roles of firemen and pretend
to put out a fire)
maneuver, manoeuvre, play -- (a deliberate coordinated movement requiring dexterity and skill; ``he made a great play'' ) - play -- a theatrical performance of a drama; ``the play lasted two hours''
- *
musical, musical comedy, musical theater play,
drama -- (a dramatic work intended for performance by actors on a stage; - * playlet -- (a short play)
- * morality play -- an allegorical play popular in the 15th and 16th centuries; characters personified virtues and vices
- turn, play -- the activity of doing something in an agreed succession; ``it is my turn" or "it is still my play''
- play --(the act using a sword (or other weapon) vigorously and skillfully