as in exploited
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
Relevance
Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for played (upon)
Verb
-
Decades before the internet, Gunness exploited men’s loneliness — luring them to her hog farm with the promise of romance and sending many to a shallow grave beneath the Indiana soil.—
Christina Coulter,
PEOPLE,
11 Oct. 2025 -
Anything a user does on Max—and everything Max can collect, such as geolocation data, contacts, photos, and audio—could presumably be accessed and exploited by the state.—
Justin Sherman,
The Atlantic,
11 Oct. 2025
Verb
-
The codes of Versace are very strong and Vitale manipulated the familiar in a playful way.—
Joelle Diderich,
Footwear News,
8 Oct. 2025
-
But those sensors can be manipulated.—
Aamir Khollam,
Interesting Engineering,
7 Oct. 2025
Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to
show current usage.
Read More
Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors.
Send us feedback.
Cite this Entry
“Played (upon).” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/played%20%28upon%29. Accessed 16 Oct. 2025.
Copy CitationLove words? Need even more definitions?
Merriam-Webster unabridged
Share