Word.ws English Dictionary

play to the gallery

play to the gallery verb: to appeal to the least sophisticated parts of an audience in order to obtain maximum approval.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To appeal to the least sophisticated parts of an audience in order to obtain maximum approval.

Synonyms of play to the gallery

Forms of play to the gallery

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

Questions about play to the gallery

What does play to the gallery mean?
Play to the gallery means to appeal to the least sophisticated parts of an audience in order to obtain maximum approval.
What part of speech is play to the gallery?
Play to the gallery is a verb.
What is the past tense of play to the gallery?
The past tense of play to the gallery is played to the gallery.

Words near play to the gallery in the dictionary

  1. play therapy
  2. play through
  3. play to
  4. play to the cheap seats
  5. play to the crowd
  6. play to the gallery
  7. play to the whistle
  8. play to win
  9. play tonsil hockey
  10. play tricks
  11. play truant

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: play to the gallery (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 to the gallery.ogg.

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