Word.ws English Dictionary

play up to

play up to verb: to try to gain favour with by flattery.

Verb

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

  1. To try to gain favour with by flattery.

Forms of play up to

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

Questions about play up to

What does play up to mean?
Play up to means to try to gain favour with by flattery.
What part of speech is play up to?
Play up to is a verb.
What is the past tense of play up to?
The past tense of play up to is played up to.

Words near play up to in the dictionary

  1. play tonsil hockey
  2. play tricks
  3. play truant
  4. play up
  5. play up Old Gooseberry
  6. play up to
  7. play upon
  8. play upon words
  9. play well with others
  10. play with
  11. play with a full deck

Source and license

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