on play

[quarrel]

...The lesson that emerges from this is that the concept of play extends over a huge range of activities. There is, of course, the conventional sense of play, but there is also the play of ideas, swordplay, play as the freedom of motion of a machine part, playing a musical instrument, a stage play, and the various erotic connotations of play (in German, a child born out of wedlock is called a Spielkind, literally, "play child"). The English word lechery is the only surviving remnant in English of the Old Germanic root leik, leikan, to play. Also striking is the fact that the Latin word for play, ludere, survives in English as lewd.

But there is another aspect of play that emerges from this linguistic analysis, and that is play as simulation. In Japanese, the most polite or formal means of expression is called asobase kotoba, literally “play language,” and it communicates the notion that those we speak about are so refined that they only play at life. Thus, the polite way to say “I hear that your father died” is “I hear that your father has played dying.” Even more striking are such words as allude, collude, and illusion, all of which are derivatives of the Latin ludere, and all of which refer to a sham, shadow, or simulated reality.

--Chris Crawford, The Art of Interactive Design, Chapter 19