as in exploiting
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 playing (upon)
Verb
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The narrative of the obscenely rich exploiting every link in the chain to amass more wealth — at the expense of shareholders, government banks and the people of India — was the old story.—
Snigdha Poonam,
The Dial,
28 Oct. 2025 -
Yet even these entities will adapt, either by exploiting visa loopholes, relying more heavily on student-to-H-1B conversions, or shifting toward the L-1 visa category, which remains unaffected by the new fee.—
Billal Rahman,
MSNBC Newsweek,
27 Oct. 2025
Verb
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Rozier’s arrest was tied to allegations of manipulating in-game statistics to benefit betting operations, while Billups was accused of participating in illicit poker events connected to the criminal network.—
Kaelan Deese,
The Washington Examiner,
23 Oct. 2025
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The craft involves manipulating color to create a specific mood, visual style or narrative theme and is widely-used across film, TV and music.—
Lily Ford,
HollywoodReporter,
22 Oct. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Playing (upon).” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/playing%20%28upon%29. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.
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