performance
Americannoun
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a musical, dramatic, or other entertainment presented before an audience.
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the act of performing a ceremony, play, piece of music, etc.
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the execution or accomplishment of work, acts, feats, etc.
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a particular action, deed, or proceeding.
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an action or proceeding of an unusual or spectacular kind.
His temper tantrum was quite a performance.
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the act of performing.
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the manner in which or the efficiency with which something reacts or fulfills its intended purpose.
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Linguistics. the actual use of language in real situations, which may or may not fully reflect a speaker's competence, being subject to such nonlinguistic factors as inattention, distraction, memory lapses, fatigue, or emotional state.
noun
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the act, process, or art of performing
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an artistic or dramatic production
last night's performance was terrible
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manner or quality of functioning
a machine's performance
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informal mode of conduct or behaviour, esp when distasteful or irregular
what did you mean by that performance at the restaurant?
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informal any tiresome procedure
what a performance dressing the children to play in the snow!
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any accomplishment
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linguistics (in transformational grammar) the form of the human language faculty, viewed as concretely embodied in speakers Compare competence langue parole
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of performance
Explanation
Performance has to do with doing something: a concert or play is a performance, and if you want to talk about how well the actors did, you'd rate their performance. The main sense of performance is artsy: actors and musicians (and other performers) give performances. You could praise an actor's performance in a movie, but this word extends to other kinds of work and accomplishments as well. If you're failing math, your performance is below par. An athlete can get in trouble for taking performance-enhancing drugs: drugs that make their performance better. Anytime you're talking about how something or someone works — or performs — you're talking about performance.
Vocabulary lists containing performance
Academy Awards, List 6
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myPerspectives 8.3
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"Principles of Business," Vocabulary from Chapter 6
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
NASA's High Performance Spaceflight Computing project is focused on boosting the computing capabilities of spacecraft used in space exploration.
From Science Daily • May 15, 2026
Battery-tech developer Cellforce Group, e-bike electric drive systems developer Porsche eBike Performance and Cetitec, a company that produces specialized software for data communications, are all being shut down.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 8, 2026
Performance director Ed Barney and head of player identification David Court are also involved in selection.
From BBC • May 7, 2026
From 1983 to 1995, High Performance was published by Astro Artz, renamed 18th Street Arts Center in 1990, and a bastion of performance art to this day.
From Los Angeles Times • May 5, 2026
There were several Red Guard Committee members and key people from the propaganda group, along with several members of the Revolutionary Performance Team and the Mao Ze-dong Thought Study Group.
From "Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution" by Ji-li Jiang
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
