See numbers game on Wiktionary
Download JSON data for numbers game meaning in All languages combined (4.5kB)
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "numbers games",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "numbers game (plural numbers games)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"related": [
{
"_dis1": "29 32 4 35",
"word": "number game"
},
{
"_dis1": "29 32 4 35",
"word": "number games"
},
{
"_dis1": "29 32 4 35",
"word": "Moneyball"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"glosses": [
"A lottery in which bettors attempt to guess which numbers will later be drawn randomly."
],
"id": "en-numbers_game-en-noun-Z4wb43mZ",
"links": [
[
"lottery",
"lottery"
],
[
"bettor",
"bettor"
],
[
"drawn",
"drawn"
],
[
"random",
"random"
]
]
},
{
"categories": [],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1969, Eric Ogden, “Government Departments (Staffing)”, in parliamentary debates (British House of Commons)",
"text": "Is it not as misleading to apply a simple numbers game to the Civil Service as it is to the police?",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1985, Jeff Rooker, “Inner Cities”, in parliamentary debates (British House of Commons)",
"text": "The Secretary of State was quick to mention the problems of the 1960s and the 1970s. He criticised the quick-build policies pursued then. He later threw in the 1950s as well. That was when the numbers game was all. We see today the results of playing the numbers game.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1985, “Interpretation”, in parliamentary debates (British House of Commons)",
"text": "Mr. John Powley (Norwich, South): The hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) was careful to say that at any one time no more than four GLC officers were present in the Committee. He did not say that only four had ever been present. Is it not possible that, through the long hours, relays of four different people at different times have been involved in the argument?\nMr. Martin Stevens: That is what is called playing the numbers game. I do no more than thank my hon. Friend for his kind intervention.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1987, Jeff Rooker, “Housing and Homelessness”, in parliamentary debates (British House of Commons)",
"text": "I made it clear in a recent letter to the Minister, to which I do not expect him to reply tonight, that we will not play the numbers game of setting targets.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"The use of inappropriate statistics (numbers) to reflect a desired result (usually misleading)."
],
"id": "en-numbers_game-en-noun-mtJoGMAh",
"links": [
[
"statistics",
"statistics"
]
]
},
{
"categories": [],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2013 May-June, David Van Tassel, Lee DeHaan, “Wild Plants to the Rescue”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, archived from the original on 2013-08-14, page 222",
"text": "Plant breeding is always a numbers game.[…]The wild species we use are rich in genetic variation, and individual plants are highly heterozygous and do not breed true. In addition, we are looking for rare alleles, so the more plants we try, the better.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2018 July 29, Barbara Ellen, “Men, please stop boasting – sex is more than just a numbers game”, in The Observer, →ISSN",
"text": "Which means that men playing a high-numbers game actually risk being bad in bed because they’re just doing the same things all the time, just with different women and not “developing their repertoire”, as it were.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"An activity that benefits from having many things to work with or on; a focus on quantity."
],
"id": "en-numbers_game-en-noun-DpElsodX",
"links": [
[
"quantity",
"quantity"
]
]
},
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "topical",
"langcode": "en",
"name": "Sports",
"orig": "en:Sports",
"parents": [
"Human activity",
"Human behaviour",
"Human",
"All topics",
"Fundamental"
],
"source": "w"
},
{
"_dis": "23 7 6 64",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [
"Entries with incorrect language header",
"Entry maintenance"
],
"source": "w+disamb"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2020 January 9, Paul Rees, “Is rugby union losing its way by becoming a numbers game?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN",
"text": "Is rugby union losing its way by becoming a numbers game? [title]",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A game or sport that is dominated by analytics."
],
"id": "en-numbers_game-en-noun-lrZSkzUH",
"links": [
[
"sports",
"sports"
],
[
"game",
"game"
],
[
"sport",
"sport"
],
[
"analytics",
"analytics"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(uncommon, sports) A game or sport that is dominated by analytics."
],
"tags": [
"uncommon"
],
"topics": [
"hobbies",
"lifestyle",
"sports"
]
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"numbers game"
],
"word": "numbers game"
}
{
"categories": [
"English countable nouns",
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English nouns"
],
"forms": [
{
"form": "numbers games",
"tags": [
"plural"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {},
"expansion": "numbers game (plural numbers games)",
"name": "en-noun"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "noun",
"related": [
{
"word": "number game"
},
{
"word": "number games"
},
{
"word": "Moneyball"
}
],
"senses": [
{
"glosses": [
"A lottery in which bettors attempt to guess which numbers will later be drawn randomly."
],
"links": [
[
"lottery",
"lottery"
],
[
"bettor",
"bettor"
],
[
"drawn",
"drawn"
],
[
"random",
"random"
]
]
},
{
"categories": [
"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "1969, Eric Ogden, “Government Departments (Staffing)”, in parliamentary debates (British House of Commons)",
"text": "Is it not as misleading to apply a simple numbers game to the Civil Service as it is to the police?",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1985, Jeff Rooker, “Inner Cities”, in parliamentary debates (British House of Commons)",
"text": "The Secretary of State was quick to mention the problems of the 1960s and the 1970s. He criticised the quick-build policies pursued then. He later threw in the 1950s as well. That was when the numbers game was all. We see today the results of playing the numbers game.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1985, “Interpretation”, in parliamentary debates (British House of Commons)",
"text": "Mr. John Powley (Norwich, South): The hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) was careful to say that at any one time no more than four GLC officers were present in the Committee. He did not say that only four had ever been present. Is it not possible that, through the long hours, relays of four different people at different times have been involved in the argument?\nMr. Martin Stevens: That is what is called playing the numbers game. I do no more than thank my hon. Friend for his kind intervention.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1987, Jeff Rooker, “Housing and Homelessness”, in parliamentary debates (British House of Commons)",
"text": "I made it clear in a recent letter to the Minister, to which I do not expect him to reply tonight, that we will not play the numbers game of setting targets.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"The use of inappropriate statistics (numbers) to reflect a desired result (usually misleading)."
],
"links": [
[
"statistics",
"statistics"
]
]
},
{
"categories": [
"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2013 May-June, David Van Tassel, Lee DeHaan, “Wild Plants to the Rescue”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, archived from the original on 2013-08-14, page 222",
"text": "Plant breeding is always a numbers game.[…]The wild species we use are rich in genetic variation, and individual plants are highly heterozygous and do not breed true. In addition, we are looking for rare alleles, so the more plants we try, the better.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2018 July 29, Barbara Ellen, “Men, please stop boasting – sex is more than just a numbers game”, in The Observer, →ISSN",
"text": "Which means that men playing a high-numbers game actually risk being bad in bed because they’re just doing the same things all the time, just with different women and not “developing their repertoire”, as it were.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"An activity that benefits from having many things to work with or on; a focus on quantity."
],
"links": [
[
"quantity",
"quantity"
]
]
},
{
"categories": [
"English terms with quotations",
"English terms with uncommon senses",
"en:Sports"
],
"examples": [
{
"ref": "2020 January 9, Paul Rees, “Is rugby union losing its way by becoming a numbers game?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN",
"text": "Is rugby union losing its way by becoming a numbers game? [title]",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"A game or sport that is dominated by analytics."
],
"links": [
[
"sports",
"sports"
],
[
"game",
"game"
],
[
"sport",
"sport"
],
[
"analytics",
"analytics"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(uncommon, sports) A game or sport that is dominated by analytics."
],
"tags": [
"uncommon"
],
"topics": [
"hobbies",
"lifestyle",
"sports"
]
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"numbers game"
],
"word": "numbers game"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.