Tetris

See also: tetris

English

A Tetris-style game in progress.

Etymology

From Russian Те́трис (Tétris), coined by the creator of the game, Alexey Pajitnov, from the Russian numerical prefix тетра- (tetra-, “tetra-”) (as all of the game's pieces contain four segments) and те́ннис (ténnis, “tennis”), his favourite sport.

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /ˈtɛtɹɪs/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

Proper noun

Tetris

1. A puzzle video game in which falling tetrominoes must be manipulated to form complete lines, which are then cleared from the grid.
   • 2001, Matt O'Keefe, You Think You Hear, page 25:

     There is one nice moment in the music, but it's not the moment identified by the owner of the system, and one idiot goes so far as to gush, "This is better than Tetris!"

   • 2007, David Skibbins, The Star: A Tarot Card Mystery, page 147:

     From the kitchen the guy said, "I write science fiction. Or I'm trying to write. I've been staring at that screen for three days. You just interrupted a one-hour Tetris marathon. I need to talk to a real human being."

   • 2008, Daniel Radosh, Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture, page 213:

     […] there were some other guys there who were into cosplay—that's costume play—and their thing was, they were dressed as Tetris blocks.

2. (figuratively) An endeavor involving rearranging things of different shape into a physical space.
   • 2004, Clare Sudbery, The dying of delight:

     Then I looked at the furniture. It was all a bit unimaginative, so I rearranged everything at a jaunty angle. When I returned to the cellar I was still playing Tetris with the cooker in my head.

   • 2005, Jack Leonard, Bad Altitude:

     While I worked out a Tetris-like arrangement to get all of the leftovers into the oven, Phil's curiosity got the better of him.

   • 2005, Rachel DeWoskin, Foreign Babes in Beijing: Behind the Scenes of a New China, page 134:

     When people spoke to me, the sounds of their words were Tetris shapes, falling. All I had to do was put each one in its bright, satisfying place.

   • 2007, David Chinnery, Kurt William Keutzer, Closing the Power Gap between ASIC & custom, page 234:

     The tetris method does have some shortcomings, however. In placements produced by Feng Shui, the cells are closely packed.

Derived terms

• inventory Tetris
• Tetris algorithm
• Tetris effect
• Tetris-like

Translations

game in which falling shapes must be manipulated

• Belarusian: Тэ́трыс m (Tétrys)
• Bulgarian: Те́трис m (Tétris)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 俄羅斯方塊／俄罗斯方块 (zh) (Éluósī fāngkuài) (Russian cube(s))

• Czech: Tetris
• Dutch: Tetris
• Esperanto: Tetriso
• Finnish: Tetris
• French: Tetris
• German: Tetris
• Hebrew: טטריס (he) (tetris)
• Icelandic: Tetris n
• Italian: Tetris
• Japanese: テトリス (tetorisu)
• Lithuanian: Tetris
• Macedonian: Те́трис m (Tétris)
• Marathi: टेट्रिस m (ṭeṭris)
• Nahuatl: Tetris
• Norwegian: Tetris
• Polish: Tetris m
• Portuguese: Tetris m
• Russian: Те́трис m (Tɛ́tris)
• Slovak: Tetris m
• Slovene: Tetris m
• Spanish: Tetris
• Swedish: Tetris
• Thai: เตตริส
• Ukrainian: Те́тріс m (Tétris)

Noun

Tetris (plural Tetrises)

1. (video games, by extension) The act of clearing four lines at once (the maximum possible) in Tetris.
   • 1990, Et cetera, Volumes 47-48:

     For some it's staying low on the play field, steadily advancing through the levels, for others its ^[sic] trying to clear the board entirely or scoring an unprecedented number of tetrises.

   • 1995, Kurt Driessens, “Relational Reinforcement Learning”, in Recent Trends in Data Type Specification, page 276:

     See figure 3 for an example of a logical decision tree that indicates whether there is a possibility to score a tetris.

   • 2003, Tandy Warnow, Binhai Zhu, Computing and combinatorics: 9th annual international conference:

     Maximizing the number of tetrises (the number of times that four rows are cleared in a Tetris game) is NP-complete.

   • 2007, Barbara Smith, Chad Yancey, Video Game Achievements and Unlockables:

     Score two Tetrises in two drops playing Marathon.

See also

• tetromino

Anagrams

• Sitter, Strite, sitter, streit, tirest, titers, titres, tretis, triest, triset, triste

Portuguese

Etymology

Borrowed from English Tetris.

Pronunciation

 

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /teˈtɾis/

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /teˈtɾis/
  • (Rio de Janeiro) IPA^(key): /teˈtɾiʃ/

• (Portugal) IPA^(key): /tɨˈtɾiʃ/

Proper noun

Tetris m

1. (video games) Tetris

Spanish

Etymology

Borrowed from English Tetris.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈtetɾis/ [ˈt̪e.t̪ɾis]
• Rhymes: -etɾis
• Syllabification: Te‧tris

Proper noun

Tetris m

1. (video games) Tetris