Word.ws English Dictionary

play catch-up

play catch-up verb: in a losing scenario, to take risks in an attempt to regain the lead.

Verb

play catch-up (third-person singular simple present plays catch-up, present participle playing catch-up, simple past and past participle played catch-up)

  1. (also) In a losing scenario, to take risks in an attempt to regain the lead.
    • "We're now having to play catch-up," says the Mayor. "What are we now, five years on from the original announcement? It's probably going to take us another six months to present a business case to government to allow us to make the platform improvements and make sure the knock-on effects to the...2020 January 2, Graeme Pickering, “Fuelling the changes on Teesside rails”, in Rail, page 59
  2. to attend to work that was left undone or that has accumulated after a break or vacation.

Forms of play catch-up

third-person singular presentplays catch-up
present participleplaying catch-up
past participleplayed catch-up
pastplayed catch-up

Questions about play catch-up

What does play catch-up mean?
Play catch-up means in a losing scenario, to take risks in an attempt to regain the lead.
What part of speech is play catch-up?
Play catch-up is a verb.
What is the past tense of play catch-up?
The past tense of play catch-up is played catch-up.

Words near play catch-up in the dictionary

  1. play both sides against the middle
  2. play bow
  3. play bows
  4. play by ear
  5. play by the rules
  6. play catch-up
  7. play cheat
  8. play chicken
  9. play clock
  10. play clocks
  11. play club

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: play catch-up (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.

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