Word.ws English Dictionary

play the ponies

play the ponies verb: to bet on horse racing.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) to bet on horse racing.

Forms of play the ponies

third-person singular presentplays the ponies
present participleplaying the ponies
past participleplayed the ponies
pastplayed the ponies

Questions about play the ponies

What does play the ponies mean?
Play the ponies means to bet on horse racing.
What part of speech is play the ponies?
Play the ponies is a verb.
What is the past tense of play the ponies?
The past tense of play the ponies is played the ponies.

Words near play the ponies in the dictionary

  1. play the man not the ball
  2. play the man, not the ball
  3. play the mischief with
  4. play the Nazi card
  5. play the odds
  6. play the ponies
  7. play the pronoun game
  8. play the race card
  9. play the same tape
  10. play the skin flute
  11. play the something card

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: play the ponies (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: En-au-play the ponies.ogg.

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