playa meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

playa

noun

US /ˈplaɪə/

Etymology Borrowed from Spanish playa (“beach”). Doublet of plage.

Geography, Geology, Natural sciences US A level area which habitually fills with water that evaporates entirely.

Beyond the valley below lay a playa, a vast dried-white lake bed, its ends reaching farther than they could see.2020, Diane Cook, The New Wilderness, Oneworld Publications, page 66:
“We are also deploying buses to Gerlach to take people to Reno who might walk off the playa. See our recommendations on when walking is viable or not. This is not likely a 24-hour operation at this time.”2023 September 3, Michael Sainato, “Officials investigate death at Burning Man as thousands stranded by floods”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:

noun

US /ˈpleɪə/

Etymology From a non-rhotic pronunciation of player

Slang A dude (an informal term of address or general term to describe a person, typically male).

Slang A player (someone who plays the field, or has prowess in gaining romantic and sexual relationships).

What Pimp was asking me to do was crazy. Off the fuckin' chain. Insane. He was scheming to stick up T.C. and Miss Lady's pool hall so we could pay off G, but a playa like me was getting ready to go to college and put all that two-bit robbing and stealing shit behind me.2006, Noire [pseudonym], Thug-A-Licious: An Urban Erotic Tale, New York, N.Y.: One World, Ballantine Books, →ISBN, page 27:
In the end, all the things Grace claimed to like about Marlon—that he was not a ‘playa’, that he was gentle and awkward and not interested in money—were all the reasons she left him.2012, Zadie Smith, NW, London: Penguin Books, published 2013, →ISBN, page 151: