Emily Dickinson Lexicon

GAME, n. [Ice. gaman; Sax. gamen, a jest, sport; gamian, to jest, to sport; It. giambare, to jest or jeer; W. camp, a feat, a game; campiaw, to contend in games. The latter seems to unite game with camp, which in Saxon and other northern dialects signifies a combat.]

1. Sport of any kind. Shak.
2. Jest; opposed to earnest; as, betwixt earnest and game. [Not used.] Spenser.
3. An exercise or play for amusement or winning a stake; as, a game of cricket; a game of chess; a game of whist. Some games depend on skill, others on hazard.
4. A single match at play. Addison.
5. Advantage in play; an, to play the game into another's hand.
6. Scheme pursued; measures planned. This seems to be the present game of that crown. Temple.
7. Field sports; the chase; falconry, &c. Shak. Waller.
8. Animals pursued or taken in the chase, or in the sports of the field; animals appropriated in England to legal sportsmen; as deer, hares, &c.
9. In antiquity, games were public diversions or contests exhibited as spectacles for the gratification of the people. These games consisted of running, leaping, wrestling, riding, &c. Such were the Olympic games, the Pythian, the Isthmian, the Nemean, &c. among the Greeks; and among the Romans, the Apollinarian, the Circensian, the Capitoline, &c. Encyc.
10. Mockery; sport; derision; as, to make game of a person.