Word.ws English Dictionary

playing for time

playing for time is the present participle and gerund of play for time.

Meaning of play for time

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To delay a situation until one is prepared.
    • Two cheers for that, at best. The original six party talks ran, or rather crawled, from 2003 to 2008. It remains unclear if North Korea was ever serious – or just playing for time while working on HEU.29 February 2012, Aidan Foster-Carter, BBC News, “North Korea: The denuclearisation dance resumes”
    Synonyms:
    buy time

Questions about playing for time

What is playing for time the present participle and gerund of?
Playing for time is the present participle and gerund of play for time.

Words near playing for time in the dictionary

  1. playing field
  2. playing fields
  3. playing fine
  4. playing first fiddle
  5. playing for love
  6. playing for time
  7. playing full
  8. playing games
  9. playing God
  10. playing gooseberry
  11. playing hardball

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: playing for time (page history and authors); play for time (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: “playing for time.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/playing_for_time. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.