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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The real reason is to wreak as much havoc as humanly possible, or at least that’s what we’re given to believe from the way the hostess swans about while deftly manipulating dozens of puppet strings simultaneously.—
David Fear,
Rolling Stone,
29 Oct. 2025
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Since 2024, a number of lawsuits have been filed by parents against companies offering AI chatbots, alleging that extensive use of the technology led to a range of harms to kids, including manipulating and isolating them and leading to death by suicide.—
Bloomberg,
Mercury News,
29 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 2 Nov. 2025.
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