Word.ws English Dictionary

play it safe

play it safe verb: to take a cautious, risk-free approach.

Verb

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

  1. To take a cautious, risk-free approach.
    • Deciding to play it safe, he joined his father's accounting firm rather than pursue an acting career.
    Antonyms:
    play big, go all in

Antonyms of play it safe

Forms of play it safe

third-person singular presentplays it safe
present participleplaying it safe
past participleplayed it safe
pastplayed it safe
alternative formplay safe

Questions about play it safe

What does play it safe mean?
Play it safe means to take a cautious, risk-free approach.
What part of speech is play it safe?
Play it safe is a verb.
What is the past tense of play it safe?
The past tense of play it safe is played it safe.

Words near play it safe in the dictionary

  1. play it cheap
  2. play it close to the hip
  3. play it cool
  4. play it for all it's worth
  5. play it pear-shaped
  6. play it safe
  7. play it straight
  8. play like
  9. play merry havoc with
  10. play merry hell with
  11. play money

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: play it safe (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-play it safe.ogg.

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