role — English Dictionary

Noun

1. A character or part played by a performer or actor.

   Examples

   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.

2. The expected behaviour of an individual in a society.

   Examples

   The role of women has changed significantly in the last century.

3. The function or position of something.

   Examples

   Local volunteers played an important role in cleaning the beach after the oil spill.

   What role does the wax in your earhole fulfill?

   More examples (1)

   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.

4. Designation that denotes an associated set of responsibilities, knowledge, skills, or privileges

   Synonyms

   capacity

   Examples

   The project manager role is responsible for ensuring that everyone on the team knows and executes his or her assigned tasks.

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   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.

   I'm setting up a few roles that all have the same permissions but different cosmetics. When I go to add a new role, the permissions are all turned off by default. Is there a way to have them default to the @everyone permissions?

5. The function of a word in a phrase.

   Examples

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   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.

Noun

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

   Usage

   • Historical

Noun

1. the actions and activities assigned to or required or expected of a person or group

   Synonyms

   functionofficepart

   Broader terms

   duty

   Examples

   the function of a teacher

   the government must do its part

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   play its role

2. an actor's portrayal of someone in a play

   Synonyms

   charactertheatrical rolepartpersona

   Broader terms

   portrayalcharacterizationenactmentpersonation

   Examples

   she played the part of Desdemona

3. what something is used for

   Synonyms

   functionpurposeuse

   Broader terms

   utilityusefulness

   Examples

   the function of an auger is to bore holes

   ballet is beautiful but what use is it?

4. normal or customary activity of a person in a particular social setting

   Broader terms

   activity

   Examples

   what is your role on the team?