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role

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role¹

  • /ɹəʊl/ UK
  • [ɹəʊɫ] UK
  • /ɹoʊl/ Canada, US
  • [ɹoʊɫ] Canada, US
  • /ɹol/ Canada, US, dialectal
  • /ɹəʉl/ Australia
  • [ɹəʉɫ] Australia
  • [ɹɐʉɫ] Australia
  • /ɹɐʉl/ New Zealand
  • [ɹɐʉɫ] New Zealand
  • /ɾol/ Scotland
  • /ɾoːl/ Wales
  • /roːl/ South Asia

Sounds like roll (toe–tow merger) · Rhymes with -əʊl

Where it comes from

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

noun roles · rôle

  1. A character or part played by a performer or actor. My neighbor was the lead role in last year's village play.
  2. The expected behaviour of an individual in a society. The role of women has changed significantly in the last century.
  3. The function or position of something. Local volunteers played an important role in cleaning the beach after the oil spill.
  4. Designation that denotes an associated set of responsibilities, knowledge, skills, or privileges The project manager role is responsible for ensuring that everyone on the team knows and executes his or her assigned tasks.

    Similar: capacity

  5. The function of a word in a phrase. 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.
  6. In the Raku programming language, a code element akin to an interface, used for composition of classes without adding to their inheritance chain.

role²

  • /ɹəʊl/ UK
  • [ɹəʊɫ] UK
  • /ɹoʊl/ Canada, US
  • [ɹoʊɫ] Canada, US
  • /ɹol/ Canada, US, dialectal
  • /ɹəʉl/ Australia
  • [ɹəʉɫ] Australia
  • [ɹɐʉɫ] Australia
  • /ɹɐʉl/ New Zealand
  • [ɹɐʉɫ] New Zealand
  • /ɾol/ Scotland
  • /ɾoːl/ Wales
  • /roːl/ South Asia

Sounds like roll (toe–tow merger) · Rhymes with -əʊl

noun roles · rôle

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

Thesaurus

Closest in meaning: persona, character, function, purpose, use, part, office, theatrical role, role-play, gig, reference, factor, speech, feature, functionality, characterization

Translations

Every language

noun character or part

Españolpapel
한국어역할 yeokhal, 역 yeok
日本語役 yaku, 役柄 yakugara
中文角色 juésè, 角 jué
हिन्दीभूमिका bhūmikā
Portuguêspapel
Françaisrôle
DeutschRolle
Italianoruolo
Ελληνικάρόλος rólos
Românărol
Русскийроль rolʹ
Tiếng Việtvai, vai trò
العربيةدَوْر dawr
עבריתתַּפְקִיד tafkíd

noun the expected behavior of an individual in a society

Españolrol
日本語役割 yakuwari
हिन्दीभूमिका bhūmikā
Portuguêsfunção, papel
Françaisrôle
DeutschRolle
Ελληνικάρόλος rólos
Русскийроль rolʹ

noun the function or position of something

Españolpapel
한국어역 yeok, 직무 jingmu
日本語役割 yakuwari
中文任務 /任务 rènwu
हिन्दीभूमिका bhūmikā
Portuguêsfunção, papel
Françaisrôle
DeutschRolle, Aufgabe, Funktion
Italianoruolo
Ελληνικάρόλος rólos
Русскийдо́лжность dólžnostʹ

noun (grammar) the function of a word in a phrase

Portuguêsfunção, papel
Françaisfonction
Ελληνικάρόλος rólos

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Cite this
MLA

"role." Wiktionary, via Micwyn, micwyn.com/word/role. Accessed 6 Nov. 2026.

APA

role. (n.d.). In Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Retrieved November 6, 2026, from https://micwyn.com/word/role

Chicago

"role." Wiktionary, via Micwyn. Accessed November 6, 2026. https://micwyn.com/word/role.

BibTeX
@misc{role_2026,
  title = {role},
  howpublished = {Wiktionary, via Micwyn},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://micwyn.com/word/role},
  urldate = {2026-11-06}
}