playwright means A writer and creator of theatrical plays. It carries an Arena rating of 1673, earned across 9 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, playwright ranks #360 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #466 of 17,142 for Most Ingenious Words, #1,025 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #2,192 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words.
playwright is pronounced /ˈpleɪˌɹaɪt/.
Why “playwright” is a great word
A writer and creator of theatrical plays. From play (a dramatic composition) + wright ('builder, craftsman'), first attested in the 1680s, though used earlier by Ben Jonson in the 1610s. Unlike dramatist, which carries a formal, literary weight, or screenwriter, whose work is fixed for the camera, a playwright is a builder for the immediacy of flesh, voice, and shared air. It is the carpenter building the false wall that will seem to tremble, the joiner fitting speech to speech so the seams do not show, the smith hammering dialogue until it rings true in the hollow dark—the humble recognition that theater is not merely written but wrought, and that the maker, like the thing made, must stand or fall in real time, before witnesses.
Etymology
From play + wright (“builder, craftsman”).
noun
- A writer and creator of theatrical plays.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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