play with
Britishverb
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to consider without giving deep thought to or coming to a conclusion concerning
we're playing with the idea of emigrating
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to behave carelessly with
to play with a girl's affections
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to fiddle or mess about with
he's just playing with his food
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
So when they invited her to Coachella, she said, “Arturo, we’d like to play with you there.”
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 12, 2026
An Iceland player took too long to leave the field, so the team had to play with 10 men for more than two minutes.
From BBC • Jun. 10, 2026
“It’s fun, but not the kind of thing to play with all day. It’s your money, so it’s serious. But it’s also dynamic and you come back to it when your life evolves.”
From MarketWatch • Jun. 9, 2026
They play with perspective, color, space and time to illuminate postwar American tensions, be they racial, political or existential.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 9, 2026
And Helena, because she’s spending a lot of time alone and doesn’t seem to want to play with her boys.
From "The Light in Hidden Places" by Sharon Cameron
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
