Word.ws English Dictionary

unplaying

unplaying is the present participle and gerund of unplay.

Meaning of unplay

Verb

unplay (third-person singular simple present unplays, present participle unplaying, simple past and past participle unplayed)

  1. (transitive) 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
  2. (ambitransitive) 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

Questions about unplaying

What is unplaying the present participle and gerund of?
Unplaying is the present participle and gerund of unplay.

Words near unplaying in the dictionary

  1. unplayably
  2. unplayed
  3. unplayful
  4. unplayfully
  5. unplayfulness
  6. unplaying
  7. unplays
  8. unpleached
  9. unpleadable
  10. unpleaded
  11. unpleading

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unplaying (page history and authors); 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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “unplaying.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unplaying. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.