tetris

noun

No English definition recorded for this entry.

Wiktionary

Pronunciation: /ˈtɛtɹɪs/

name

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.

A puzzle video game in which falling tetrominoes must be manipulated to form complete lines, which are then cleared from the grid.
“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!"”
“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."”
An endeavor involving rearranging things of different shape into a physical space.
“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.”
“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.”

noun

The act of clearing four lines at once (the maximum possible) in Tetris.
“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.”
“See figure 3 for an example of a logical decision tree that indicates whether there is a possibility to score a tetris.”

verb

Etymology: From Tetris.

To arrange items in a constrained space.
“It will be hard to tetris all this furniture into the moving van.”