play for time

play for time verb: to delay a situation until one is prepared.

Verb

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

(idiomatic) To delay a situation until one is prepared.
- Two cheers for that, at best. The original six party talks ran, or rather crawled, from 2003 to 2008. It remains unclear if North Korea was ever serious – or just playing for time while working on HEU.29 February 2012, Aidan Foster-Carter, BBC News, “North Korea: The denuclearisation dance resumes”
Synonyms:

buy time

delay, stall, temporize: സമയം കിട്ടാനായി അടവെടുക്കുക, കൗശലപൂർവം കാലതാമസം വരുത്തുക, വിളംബപ്പെടുത്തുക, വിളംബം വരുത്തുക, നീട്ടിനീട്ടിവയ്ക്കുക, അമാന്തിക്കുക

third-person singular present	plays for time
present participle	playing for time
past participle	played for time
past	played for time

What does play for time mean?: Play for time means to delay a situation until one is prepared.
What is play for time in Malayalam?: Play for time in Malayalam is സമയം കിട്ടാനായി അടവെടുക്കുക, കൗശലപൂർവം കാലതാമസം വരുത്തുക, വിളംബപ്പെടുത്തുക. See Play for time meaning in Malayalam.
What part of speech is play for time?: Play for time is a verb.
What is the past tense of play for time?: The past tense of play for time is played for time.

Adapted from Wiktionary: play for time (page history and authors); play for time (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-play for time.ogg.

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