play out

verb

played out; playing out; plays out

transitive verb

1

a

: to perform to the end

play out a role

b

: use up, finish

play out the season

2

: unreel, unfold

… played out a length of line.

—Gordon Webber

intransitive verb

1

: to become spent or exhausted

a style that has played out

2

: develop, unfold

see how things play out

Synonyms of play out

• spend
• consume
• drain
• exhaust
• draw down
• run out of
• use up
• reduce
• absorb
• use

Examples of play out in a Sentence

we've finally played out the leftovers from that huge holiday meal

Recent Examples on the Web

Seven decades or so earlier, the Scottish naturalist James Hutton had argued that geological processes played out gradually over previously unimagined periods of time. —Sebastian Smee, New Yorker, 4 May 2026

As this sequence plays out, the social fabric further shreds and unravels; trust circles shrink and become ever more homogeneous; and hostility, mean spiritedness, and a general hardening take hold in society. —Nick Lichtenberg, Fortune, 3 May 2026

In college, possession is awarded to one team or the other based on an alternating possession arrow, but at the pro level the players involved in the call actually have to play out the jump to resume the game. —Emily Adams, Hartford Courant, 3 May 2026

Race, bad bosses and the fly-on-the-wall fun of watching office politics and micro-aggressions play out makes this workplace suspense novel a total page-turner (as well as a binge-worthy limited television series). —Laura Zigman, PEOPLE, 2 May 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1598, in the meaning defined at transitive sense 1a

Rhymes for play out

• about
• bailout
• blackout
• blowout
• breakout
• burnout
• buyout
• checkout
• closeout
• cutout
• devout
• dropout

Kids Definition

play out

verb

1

: to perform to the end

2

a

: to use up or finish

b

: to become exhausted : tire

3

: unreel, unfold