unplay
unplay verb: hypothetically, to undo the playing of.
Verb
unplay (third-person singular simple present unplays, present participle unplaying, simple past and past participle unplayed)
- Hypothetically, to undo the playing of.
- I feel like a traitor, but what's done is done. I can't unplay that note, even if it was a sour one.2003, Mary Sheppard, The Winds of Change, page 82
- To interact with something in a way that subverts the conventions of playing.
- Flanagan outlines three kinds of critical play enacted by Victorian girls with dolls: In doll play, unplaying manifests in children abusing their dolls, "killing" them, or some other revision of the "care giving" framework […]2020, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, How Pac-Man Eats, page 101
- How they might go about unplaying a work would be awkward, but it might involve asking performers to commit to their idiosyncrasies and play away from what's given.2022, Eldritch Priest, Earworm and Event
Forms of unplay
| third-person singular present | unplays |
|---|---|
| present participle | unplaying |
| past participle | unplayed |
| past | unplayed |
Origin of unplay
From un- + play.
Questions about unplay
- What does unplay mean?
- Unplay means hypothetically, to undo the playing of.
- What part of speech is unplay?
- Unplay is a verb.
- What is the past tense of unplay?
- The past tense of unplay is unplayed.
Words near unplay in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: unplay (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: “unplay.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unplay. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.