role

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See also: rolé, rolę, and rôle

English

Pronunciation

Etymology 1

From French rôle, from Middle French rolle, from Old French role, from Medieval Latin rotulus. Doublet of roll and rotulus.

Alternative forms

Noun

role (plural roles)

  2. A character or part played by a performer or actor.
    My neighbor was the lead role in last year's village play.
    Her dream was to get a role in a Hollywood movie, no matter how small.
  4. The expected behaviour of an individual in a society.
    The role of women has changed significantly in the last century.
  6. The function or position of something.
    Local volunteers played an important role in cleaning the beach after the oil spill.
    What role does the wax in your earhole fulfill?
    • 2013 May-June, Katrina G. Claw, “Rapid Evolution in Eggs and Sperm”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3:
      In plants, the ability to recognize self from nonself plays an important role in fertilization, because self-fertilization will result in less diverse offspring than fertilization with pollen from another individual.
  8. Designation that denotes an associated set of responsibilities, knowledge, skills, and attitudes
    The project manager role is responsible for ensuring that everyone on the team knows and executes his or her assigned tasks.
    • 1939 November 10, “Following The War”, in The Chart‎, volume I, number 1, Joplin, Missouri: Joplin Junior College, page 4, column 1:
      As students all over the United States knuckle down to learning, the rumble of war drums once more proclaims Mars high man in Europe. Discarding morbid curiosity, every student should consider it vitally necessary to get a general picture of the causes, movements, and possible effects of World War II. The average U. S. citizen's knowledge of World War II will probably decide his role in it.
  9. (grammar) The function of a word in a phrase.
    • 1984, David M. Perlmutter, Carol G. Rosen, Studies in relational grammar: Volume 2:
      Examining these verbs one by one, what one finds is that Auxiliary Selection does correlate in the expected way with the two kinds of optional transitivity, confirming that with each predicate, one semantic role has a fixed link with initial 1-hood, another with initial 2-hood.
  10. (object-oriented programming) In the Raku programming language, a code element akin to an interface, used for composition of classes without adding to their inheritance chain.
Hyponyms
Derived terms
Collocations
with verbs
  • apply for a role
  • adapt to a role
  • assume a role
  • get a role
  • land a role
  • play a role
  • quite one's role
  • take on a role
  • take up a role
with adjectives
  • central role
  • lead role
  • main role
  • major role
  • minor role
Descendants
  • → Spanish: rol
Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

Etymology 2

Noun

role (plural roles)

  1. (historical) An ancient unit of quantity, 72 sheets of parchment.

References

Anagrams

Czech

Pronunciation

Etymology 1

Borrowed from German Rolle, from Old French rolle, role (“parchment scroll, inventory”), from Latin rotula, rotulus (“little wheel”), which is a diminutive of rota (“wheel”).

Noun

role f

  1. role, part (of an actor)
    Synonyms: úloha, part
  2. lines (spoken text of an actor playing a part)
    Synonym: part
  3. role (e.g. of a person in a society)
    Synonym: úloha
  4. (linguistics) role (function of a constituent in a clause)
  5. scroll
    Synonym: svitek
Declension
Declension of role (soft feminine)
singular plural
nominative role role
genitive role rolí
dative roli rolím
accusative roli role
vocative role role
locative roli rolích
instrumental rolí rolemi
Derived terms
Related terms

Etymology 2

Inherited from Old Czech rolí, from Proto-Slavic *orlьja, from *orati.

Noun

role f

  1. (obsolete, literary) field (area to grow crops)
    Synonym: pole
  2. old unit of field measurement
  3. (obsolete, literary) area, domain (of activity)
    Synonyms: obor, okruh
    • 1910, Antonín Zoglmann, “Paměti starého učitele. (II.)”, in Český lid, volume XIX, Praha: F. Šimáček, pages 412–418:
      […] horlivý, tichý pracovník na roli školské […]
      avid, quiet worker in the domain of education
Declension
Declension of role (soft feminine)
singular plural
nominative role role
genitive role rolí
dative roli rolím
accusative roli role
vocative role role
locative roli rolích
instrumental rolí rolemi
Derived terms
Related terms

Further reading

  • role in Příruční slovník jazyka českého, 1935–1957
  • role in Slovník spisovného jazyka českého, 1960–1971, 1989
  • role in Internetová jazyková příručka

References

  1. ^ Rejzek, Jiří (2015) “role1”, in Český etymologický slovník [Czech Etymological Dictionary] (in Czech), 3rd (revised and expanded) edition, Praha: LEDA, →ISBN, page 598
  2. ^ Rejzek, Jiří (2015) “role2”, in Český etymologický slovník [Czech Etymological Dictionary] (in Czech), 3rd (revised and expanded) edition, Praha: LEDA, →ISBN, page 598

Anagrams

Galician

Verb

role

  1. inflection of rolar:
    1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
    2. third-person singular imperative

Old French

Noun

role oblique singular, m (oblique plural roles, nominative singular roles, nominative plural role)

  1. roll; scroll (rolled up document)

Descendants

References

  • Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle (1881) (role, supplement)

Polish

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈrɔ.lɛ/
  • Rhymes: -ɔlɛ
  • Syllabification: ro‧le

Noun

role

  1. nominative/accusative/vocative plural of rola

Further reading

  • role in Polish dictionaries at PWN

Portuguese

Verb

role

  1. inflection of rolar:
    1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
    2. third-person singular imperative

Spanish

Verb

role

  1. inflection of rolar:
    1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
    2. third-person singular imperative
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