The Meaning of Playfulness: A Review of the Contemporary Definitions of the Concept across Disciplines

‘Playfulness’ is a concept used in various disciplines. In this article, we conduct qualitative, systematic, and interdisciplinary literature review on the term ‘playfulness’ as recent scholarship. The article aims to overcome ambiguity relating order create opportunities for growth all related fields of study. Based 429 written works 184 extracted definitions across disciplines, find six clusters meaning which emphasise engagement. Three themes describe different methods how engagement structured become higher priority than its context. other three discuss structural characteristics contexts that are playfully engaged in. A new synthetic conceptualization offered: Playfulness prioritizes over external consequence, realness, or convention. Furthermore, study argues playfulness not ‘what’ ‘why,’ but ‘how,’ organizing principle.