Word.ws English Dictionary

play to

play to verb: used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see play, to.

Verb

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

  1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see play, to.
    • At the festival, the band played to 20,000 people.
  2. To act in a way most suitable to; to act in a way that best brings out (a quality, condition, etc.).
    • He played to his strengths tonight.
    • The advertisement plays to people's fears about cancer.
  3. To act in order to gain the attention or admiration of.
    • to play to the crowd
    • to play to the cameras

Forms of play to

third-person singular presentplays to
present participleplaying to
past participleplayed to
pastplayed to

Questions about play to

What does play to mean?
Play to means used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see play, to.
What part of speech is play to?
Play to is a verb.
What is the past tense of play to?
The past tense of play to is played to.

Words near play to in the dictionary

  1. play the wag
  2. play the white man
  3. play therapies
  4. play therapy
  5. play through
  6. play to
  7. play to the cheap seats
  8. play to the crowd
  9. play to the gallery
  10. play to the whistle
  11. play to win

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: play to (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 to.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/play_to. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.