Word.ws English Dictionary

counterplay

counterplay noun: a game move made as a response.

Noun

counterplay (countable and uncountable, plural counterplays)

  1. A game move made as a response.
  2. A counterattack in a different part of the board.
    • Milov might have tried 15 ... b4 to give himself some counterplay on the queenside.2007 January 7, Dylan Loeb Mcclain, “After a Detour, Nakamura, 19, Is Back to His Winning Ways”, in New York Times
  3. A subversive style of gameplay in which a player attempts to overturn the usual rules and conventions of the game.
    • Near-synonym: playing off meta — colloquial
    Synonyms:
    playing off meta

Verb

counterplay (third-person singular simple present counterplays, present participle counterplaying, simple past and past participle counterplayed)

  1. To make a counterplay; to play in response.
    • I knew that, with this arrangement, unless I should counterplay, they would soon fleece me.1844, Jonathan H. Green, Gambling Unmasked! […], page 191
    • In these wars of theirs for the heritage of the whole world, continents will be staked, India, China, South Africa, Russia, Islam called out, new technics and tactics played and counterplayed.1928 [1922], Oswald Spengler, translated by Charles Francis Atkinson, The Decline of the West, volume 2, Perspectives of World-History, page 429
  2. To counter; to contrast or contradict.
    • Yürük weaving generally comprises a rich burnt apricot, particularly in the borders; a mulberry-red filling large areas of the field; lighter reds used to counterplay against a deep, dark crimson […]1997, Brian W. MacDonald, Tribal Rugs: Treasures of the Black Tent, page 60
    • Self-reflections on hope are counterplayed by the grim reality in the camp, reminiscent of a lost home, and the agony for the future.2019, Natasha Remoundou, “Intercultural Performance Ecologies in the Making: Minor(ity) Theatre and the Greek Crisis”, in Charlotte McIvor, Jason King, editors, Interculturalism and Performance Now...

Synonyms of counterplay

  • playing off meta

Forms of counterplay

Noun
pluralcounterplays
Verb
third-person singular presentcounterplays
present participlecounterplaying
past participlecounterplayed
pastcounterplayed

Origin of counterplay

From counter- + play.

Words formed from counterplay

Questions about counterplay

What does counterplay mean?
Counterplay means a game move made as a response.
What part of speech is counterplay?
Counterplay can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of counterplay?
The plural of counterplay is counterplays.

Words near counterplay in the dictionary

  1. counterplanners
  2. counterplanning
  3. counterplans
  4. counterplate
  5. counterplates
  6. counterplay
  7. counterplayed
  8. counterplayer
  9. counterplayers
  10. counterplaying
  11. counterplays

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: counterplay (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-counterplay.wav.

Cite this entry: “counterplay.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/counterplay. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.