cosplay

English

A woman cosplaying the title character from Sailor Moon.

Etymology

Borrowed from Japanese コスプレ (kosupure), which is a clipping of コスチュームプレイ (kosuchūmu purei), from a compound of English costume + play.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈkɒz.pleɪ/, /ˈkɒs.pleɪ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈkɑz.pleɪ/, /ˈkɑs.pleɪ/, (hyperforeign) /ˌkoʊˈspleɪ/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

Noun

cosplay (countable and uncountable, plural cosplays)

1. (uncountable) The art or practice of costuming oneself as a (usually fictional) character.
   • 2003, Cosplay Girls: Japan's Live Animation Heroines:

     Men, of course, also participate in cosplay and all its attending events, but women make up the greater numbers.

   • 2006, Frenchy Lunning, Mechademia 1: Emerging Worlds of Anime And Manga, page 75:

     The environments and spaces created for and by cosplay provide cosplayers with a variety of spaces for social interactions.

   • 2010, Antonia Levi, Mark McHarry, Dru Pagliassotti, Boys' Love Manga, page 5:

     It didn't take long for anime cons and cosplay to become a part of popular culture fandom in the West […]

2. (countable) A skit or instance of this art or practice.
   • 2010, Sarah Lynne Bowman, The Functions of Role-playing Games, page 29:

     Central to the activity of cosplay is elaborate costuming, though some cosplays are enacted using a game system.

   • 2010, Anne Cooper-Chen, Cartoon Cultures: The Globalization of Japanese Popular Media, page 121:

     According to a student from France who went to Japan to study Japanese, "Universities in France are like Halloween when otaku students engage in these cosplays. They take Japanese language because of anime, but they see after a few classes that it's hard and not fun. Many drop out" (author interview, 2009).

   • 2012, Dan Hunter, Ramon Lobato, Megan Richardson, Amateur Media: Social, cultural and legal perspectives:

     Popular cosplays include, for example, characters from the Final Fantasy range of games […]

Coordinate terms

• dress-up

Translations

subculture centered on dressing as characters

• Arabic: كُوسْبْلَاي m (kusplay)
• Bulgarian: коспле́й m (kospléj)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 角色扮演 (zh) (juésè bànyǎn), 色扮演秀 (sèbànyǎnxiù), 角演 (juéyǎn), cos (zh)

• Dutch: cosplay (nl) m
• Esperanto: rolkostumado
• Finnish: cosplay (fi), pukuilu
• French: cosplay (fr) m, costumade (fr) f
• Galician: cosplay
• German: Cosplay n
• Hungarian: jelmezbál (hu), beöltözősdi, cosplay (hu)
• Italian: cosplay (it) m or m pl
• Japanese: コスプレ (ja) (kosupure)
• Korean: 코스프레 (ko) (koseupeure)
• Marathi: कॉस्प्ले (kŏsple)
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: cosplay n

  Nynorsk: cosplay n

• Persian: کوزپلی (kospley)
• Polish: cosplay (pl) m
• Portuguese: cosplay (pt) m
• Russian: коспле́й (ru) m (kospléj), коспле́й (ru) m (kosplɛ́j)
• Spanish: cosplay m
• Swedish: cosplay
• Tagalog: cosplay
• Thai: คอสเพลย์ (th) (kɔ́ɔs-plee)
• Ukrainian: коспле́й m (kospléj)

Verb

cosplay (third-person singular simple present cosplays, present participle cosplaying, simple past and past participle cosplayed)

1. (intransitive) To costume oneself as a character.

   She cosplayed at the manga convention.

   • 2022 December 23, Marina Hyde, “Who can doubt the futuristic brilliance of Sunak and co? They’ve given us driverless government”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     Senior politicians have cosplayed as train drivers, ambulance workers, Border Force officials – the list goes on.

2. (transitive) To costume oneself as (a character).

   She cosplayed Sailor Moon at the manga convention.

3. (figurative, often derogatory, transitive) To adopt the behavior and mannerisms of another.
   • 2022 March 17, Aila Slisco, “Ukrainian UN Ambassador Accuses Russians of Engaging in 'Nazi Cosplay'”, in Newsweek‎^[2], retrieved 18 March 2022:

     Why has the Russian Federation decided to cosplay the Nazi Third Reich by attacking the peaceful neighboring state and plunging the region into war?

   • 2022, Ling Ma, “Office Hours”, in Bliss Montage, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN:

     On weekends, there was usually a party. Her classmates, free from their wealthy families, cosplayed as struggling intellectuals.

   • 2022 May 30, Rebecca Solnit, “US mass shootings will continue until the majority can overrule the minority”, in The Guardian‎^[3]:

     […] turning conservative white men into amateur commandos cosplaying war wherever they liked and the US into a war zone.

   • 2022 August 27, Drachinifel, 2:44 from the start, in Type 1936A / Narvik class - Guide 298‎^[4], archived from the original on 29 August 2022:

     Whilst their stability was generally an improvement on earlier German destroyers, as the vessels no longer displayed a strong desire to cosplay as U-boats, the main armament proved to be something of a problem.

   • 2025 April 27, Pippa Crerar, quoting Paul Nowak, “Nigel Farage is a political fraud ‘cosplaying’ as working-class champion, TUC chief says”, in The Guardian‎^[5], →ISSN:

     Nigel Farage is a “political fraud and hypocrite” who is “cosplaying” as a working-class champion in order to win votes at this week’s local elections, the UK’s most senior union chief has warned.

Coordinate terms

• dress up

Derived terms

• cosfamous
• cosplayer
• cosplaytriot
• crossplay

Descendants

• → Norwegian: cosplay
• → Portuguese: cosplay
• → Russian: коспле́й (kospléj)
• → Spanish: cosplay
• → Thai: คอสเพลย์ (kɔ́ɔs-plee)
• → Ukrainian: коспле́й (kospléj)

Translations

to costume oneself as a character

• Bulgarian: коспле́йвам (kospléjvam)
• Catalan: vestir-se com
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: cos (zh)

• Esperanto: rolkostumigi (transitive)
• Finnish: pukuilla
• French: cosplayer (fr), costumader
• Italian: fare un cosplay, vestirsi come
• Japanese: コスプレする
• Latin: vestior quā (literally “to dress as [X]”)
• Polish: uprawiać cosplay impf
• Portuguese: fazer cosplay
• Russian: коспле́ить (ru) impf (kospléitʹ)
• Spanish: vestirse como, disfrazarse de
• Swedish: cosplaya
• Thai: คอสเพลย์ (th) (kɔ́ɔs-plee)

See also

• gijinka

Further reading

• cosplay on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• Calypso, calypso

French

Etymology

From English cosplay. The Office québécois de la langue française recommends the term costumade as its replacement.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kɔs.plɛ/

• Audio (Switzerland (Valais)):

  (file)

• Audio (France (Vosges)):

  (file)

Noun

cosplay m (plural cosplays)

1. cosplay

   Synonym: costumade (Quebec)

Derived terms

• cosplayer
• cosplayeur

Anagrams

• calypso

Norwegian Bokmål

Etymology

Borrowed from English cosplay.

Noun

cosplay n (definite singular cosplayet, indefinite plural cosplay, definite plural cosplaya or cosplayene)

1. cosplay (The practice)
2. cosplay (A specific instance)

Related terms

• cosplaye (verb)

Norwegian Nynorsk

Etymology

Borrowed from English cosplay.

Noun

cosplay n (definite singular cosplayet, indefinite plural cosplay, definite plural cosplaya)

1. cosplay (The practice)
2. cosplay (A specific instance)

Related terms

• cosplaya (verb)

Polish

Etymology

Etymology tree

Proto-Indo-European *ḱe

Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm

Proto-Italic *kom

Proto-Italic *kom-

Latin con-

Proto-Indo-European *swé

Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁-

Proto-Indo-European *swe-dʰh₁-sḱ-

Latin suēscō

Latin cōnsuēscō

Proto-Indo-European *-tu-

Proto-Indo-European *-d-

Proto-Indo-European *-Hō

Proto-Italic *tūdō

Latin -tūdō

Latin consuētūdinem

Italian costumebor.

French costumebor.

English costumeder.

Proto-West Germanic *plehan

Old English pleġan

Proto-West Germanic *plegō

Proto-Indo-European *-h₂

Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂

Proto-Indo-European *-yéti

Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂yéti

Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ti

Proto-Germanic *-ōną

Proto-West Germanic *-ōn

Proto-West Germanic *plegōn

Old English plegian

Middle English pleyen

Proto-West Germanic *plegō

Old English plega

Middle English pleye

English playder.

Japanese コスプレ (kosupure)bor.

English cosplayubor.

Polish cosplay

Unadapted borrowing from English cosplay.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkɔs.plɛj/
• Rhymes: -ɔsplɛj
• Syllabification: cos‧play

Noun

cosplay m inan (related adjective cosplayowy)

1. cosplay (art or practice of costuming oneself as a (usually fictional) character)

Declension

Declension of cosplay

	singular
nominative	cosplay
genitive	cosplayu
dative	cosplayowi
accusative	cosplay
instrumental	cosplayem
locative	cosplayu
vocative	cosplayu

Related terms

nouns

• cosplayer
• cosplayerka

Further reading

• cosplay at Obserwatorium językowe Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego

Portuguese

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English cosplay.

Pronunciation

 

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /kɔsˈplej/ [kɔsˈpleɪ̯]

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /kɔsˈplej/ [kɔsˈpleɪ̯]
  • (Rio de Janeiro) IPA^(key): /kɔʃˈplej/ [kɔʃˈpleɪ̯]

 

• (Portugal) IPA^(key): /kɔʃˈplɐj/

• (Portugal) IPA^(key): /kɔʃˈplɐj/
  • (Northern Portugal) IPA^(key): /kɔʃˈplej/
  • (Central Portugal) IPA^(key): /kɔʃˈplej/
  • (Southern Portugal) IPA^(key): /kɔʃˈple/

• Rhymes: (Brazil) -ej, (Portugal) -ɐj

Noun

cosplay m (uncountable)

1. cosplay (art of dressing as characters)

   Fazer cosplay de um personagem.

   To cosplay as a character.

   (literally, “To make cosplay of a character.”)

2. cosplay (instance of dressing as a character)

Quotations

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:cosplay.

Related terms

• cosplayer
• cospobre

Further reading

• “cosplay”, in Dicionário Aulete Digital (in Portuguese), Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon Editora Digital, 2008–2026
• “cosplay”, in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Lisbon: Priberam, 2008–2026
• “cosplay”, in Dicio – Dicionário Online de Português (in Portuguese), São Paulo: 7Graus, 2009–2026

Spanish

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English cosplay.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kosˈplei/ [kosˈplei̯]
  • Rhymes: -ei
• IPA^(key): /ˈkosplei/ [ˈkos.plei̯]
  • Rhymes: -osplei
• Syllabification: cos‧play

Noun

cosplay m (plural cosplays)

1. cosplay

Related terms

• cospobre