Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Without play; not playing.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Then packed up & moved to another screen in another city to playless than a minute ago via webKevinSmith

    Kevin Smith, tweeting a 'Red State' defense Jen Chaney 2011

  • After forty-five years of the playless life of a serf to blighting seriousness, the wonder is that sourness had not entered to hopelessly curdle all chances for joyous living.

    Our Nervous Friends — Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness Robert S. Carroll

  • "The evils of lust and drink are the evils that devour playless and inhibited youth."

    The Minister and the Boy A Handbook for Churchmen Engaged in Boys' Work Allan Hoben

  • Odd little, silent creatures the children were, white-faced and white-haired, playless and grave, laboring like their elders even from the age of five or six.

    Darkness and Dawn George Allan England 1906

  • I had in my thought to speak of these new inhabitants as workers, but that word has in it too much of the suggestion of endless, hopeless, playless labor.

    The French in the Heart of America John Finley 1901

  • We need but follow the children, who have had a playless childhood, into a narrow and barren manhood.

    The Mind and Its Education George Herbert Betts 1901

  • We need but to trace back the history of the dull and brutish men of today, and find that they were the playless children of yesterday.

    The Mind and Its Education George Herbert Betts 1901

  • I was a playless day-dreamer, a _helluo librorum_; my appetite for which was indulged by a singular incident.

    Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers — Volume 2 Thomas De Quincey 1822

  • I was a playless day-dreamer, a _helluo librorum_; my appetite for which was indulged by a singular incident.

    Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers Thomas De Quincey 1822

  • Although it can't be denied that ghosts of the past might come and haunt you, acknowledging once mistakes or youth sins and when confronted being able to stand for those choices and explain or dismiss them is a far better skill to learn then engaging in a playless, rationalized online identity creation process, afraid of online stalkers, marketeers and future employees.

    Masters of Media, New Media MA Amsterdam 2008

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