ludophilia means The love of play. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.
Why this word is great
LUDOPHILIA — [Noun] An abiding love of play, games, and the structured spirit of play itself. From the Latin lūdus ("play, game") and the English combining form -philia (from the Ancient Greek φιλία (philía, "love, fondness")). Unlike ludopathy (which pathologizes compulsion, particularly with gambling) or mere playfulness (which describes a transient behavioral trait), ludophilia is a chronic, structural affection for the formal magic of rules. It is the tactile ritual of shuffling a deck of cards, the deliberate geometry of a backgammon board, the suspended disbelief of a child who truly is a pirate on a couch-cushion ship—a quiet allegiance to the possibility that life’s most serious truths are hidden inside frivolous containers.
noun
- The love of play.“[…] based on sicalipsis, with their tastelessness, petty subjects and immodest exhibition of female beauties, became a fitting artistic formula for the hedonism, ludophilia, escapism, and consumerism of the years just prior to the Great War, an atmosphere well reflected in stage settings similar to the ones displayed on the grand avenues and boulevards of the main European […]”