Word.ws English Dictionary

play to the whistle

play to the whistle verb: to continue playing until the referee has blown his whistle to stop play.

Verb

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

  1. To continue playing until the referee has blown his whistle to stop play

Forms of play to the whistle

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

Questions about play to the whistle

What does play to the whistle mean?
Play to the whistle means to continue playing until the referee has blown his whistle to stop play.
What part of speech is play to the whistle?
Play to the whistle is a verb.
What is the past tense of play to the whistle?
The past tense of play to the whistle is played to the whistle.

Words near play to the whistle in the dictionary

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

Source and license

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