actor's line
1
3.5
- noun
- /ˈæktərz laɪn/
:
línea del actor
- The director emphasized the importance of delivering each actor's line with emotion.
Examples
-
For example, when an actor's line has them riding a horse, the actors pretend to ride the horse.
Blog text (15) -
In the play, the main character forgot his actor's line and had to improvise.
-
The actors' lines were better, too, and held an excitement she had never heard before.
Fiction book (1993) -
During the rehearsal, she practiced her actor's line until she had it memorized perfectly.
Synonyms
42
3.9
The words one character says in a play or scene
How Long
Surface Forms
Morphology
actor's + line
This is a straightforward possessive + noun composition: 'actor's' (the performer) + 'line' (a spoken sentence), so the meaning 'the words spoken by an actor' is directly derivable from the parts. The possessive construction and the common sense of 'line' as a spoken utterance are cross-linguistically common, making it immediately comprehensible to a B1 learner who knows the constituents.
Etymology
Actor's line comes from the way plays are written: each actor's name is next to the line they must say on the page. Imagine a paper with short lines of speech for each actor — that's why actor's line means 'the words an actor speaks' in a performance.