Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary - performance

(performances) Frequency: The word is one of the 1500 most common words in English. 1. A performance involves entertaining an audience by doing something such as singing, dancing, or acting. Inside the theatre, they were giving a performance of Bizet’s Carmen. ...her performance as the betrayed Medea... N-COUNT 2. Someone’s or something’s performance is how successful they are or how well they do something. That study looked at the performance of 18 surgeons... The job of the new director-general was to ensure that performance targets were met. N-VAR: oft with poss 3. A car’s performance is its ability to go fast and to increase its speed quickly. N-UNCOUNT 4. A performance car is one that can go very fast and can increase its speed very quickly. ADJ: ADJ n see also high-performance 5. The performance of a task is the fact or action of doing it. He devoted in excess of seventy hours a week to the performance of his duties... N-SING: usu the N of n 6. You can describe something that is or looks complicated or difficult to do as a performance. (INFORMAL) The whole process is quite a performance... N-SING: usu a N 7. a repeat performance: see repeat