as in to exploit
to control or take advantage of by artful, unfair, or insidious means
played upon the customer's vanity to convince her to buy the expensive makeup kit
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for play (upon)
Verb
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State-of-the-art dilution refrigerators exploit mixtures of helium-3 and helium-4 to cool qubits down to millikelvin temperatures where fragile quantum states can persist.—
Kaif Shaikh,
Interesting Engineering,
24 Sep. 2025 -
That each and every one of us has a role to play in standing up against authoritarian powers that want to exploit our differences for their own gain.—
Hayes Madsen,
Rolling Stone,
24 Sep. 2025
Verb
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The twilight of empire was also a time of conspiracy theories about international Jewish cabals, said to manipulate power through money and shadowy networks in order to rule the world.—
Ian Buruma,
New Yorker,
22 Sep. 2025
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Wood said that the Google is manipulating the market in a way that is antithetical to free market competition.—
Michael Liedtke,
Fortune,
22 Sep. 2025
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“Play (upon).” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/play%20%28upon%29. Accessed 30 Sep. 2025.
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