game [OE] The original meaning of game, dating back to early Old English, was ‘amusement, fun, or pleasure’. Shakespeare uses it in this sense in Love’s Labour’s Lost: ‘We have had pastimes here and pleasant game’. Other early meanings included ‘a jest or joke’, and ‘a laughing stock’. The sense of an ‘animal hunted’ [LME] developed from the earlier sense of ‘pleasure of the hunt’. The adjective sense ‘full of fight, spirited’ (now used also to mean ‘ready and willing’) [M18th], comes from a use of the noun as a term for a fighting cock. To be on the game and similar phrases [M17th] is to be involved in prostitution. Although the expression dates from the late 19th century, the use of game to mean ‘sexual activity’ is much older, being found from c.1200 and with hints of its use in Old English. In the mid 18th century ‘on the game’ was also thieves’ slang for thieving or housebreaking. Rather different is playing the game, behaving in a fair or honourable way or abiding by the rules. The expression is recorded from the early 19th century and memorably used in Henry Newbolt’s poem ‘Vitai Lampada’ (1897), celebrating public school values: ‘And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat, / Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame, / But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote – / ‘Play up! play up! And play the game!’ Gambling [E18th] developed from game.

Game meaning ‘injured, lame’ [L18th] as in game leg was apparently originally north Midlands dialect (as gam); its origin is uncertain but it may be related to Welsh cam ‘crooked’. A variant dialect form of game is gammy [M19th] which in the past could also mean ‘bad, false’.