"play to win" meaning in All languages combined

See play to win on Wiktionary

Verb [English]

Audio: En-au-play to win.ogg [Australia] Forms: to play to win [canonical], plays to win [present, singular, third-person], playing to win [participle, present], played to win [participle, past], played to win [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|*|head=to play to win}} to play to win (third-person singular simple present plays to win, present participle playing to win, simple past and past participle played to win)
  1. (sports) To play in an especially competitive, committed manner, focused intently on winning. Categories (topical): Sports Synonyms: do whatever it takes, pull out the stops
    Sense id: en-play_to_win-en-verb-xGS8TJS~ Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 63 37 Topics: hobbies, lifestyle, sports
  2. (idiomatic, by extension) To make a special, determined effort to achieve general success or a particular goal, in life, in one's career, in negotiation, etc. Tags: broadly, idiomatic
    Sense id: en-play_to_win-en-verb-X3xDoO31

Download JSON data for play to win meaning in All languages combined (3.7kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "to play to win",
      "tags": [
        "canonical"
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    },
    {
      "form": "plays to win",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "playing to win",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "played to win",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "played to win",
      "tags": [
        "past"
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  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*",
        "head": "to play to win"
      },
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      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Sports",
          "orig": "en:Sports",
          "parents": [
            "Human activity",
            "Human behaviour",
            "Human",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "63 37",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1992 June 6, Clifton Brown, “Basketball: Blazers Beat Bulls in Overtime to Even Series”, in New York Times, retrieved 2012-07-29",
          "text": "[W]e just got totally outplayed. Instead of playing to win, we were playing not to lose.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To play in an especially competitive, committed manner, focused intently on winning."
      ],
      "id": "en-play_to_win-en-verb-xGS8TJS~",
      "links": [
        [
          "sports",
          "sports"
        ],
        [
          "competitive",
          "competitive"
        ],
        [
          "committed",
          "committed"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(sports) To play in an especially competitive, committed manner, focused intently on winning."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "_dis1": "91 9",
          "word": "do whatever it takes"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "91 9",
          "word": "pull out the stops"
        }
      ],
      "topics": [
        "hobbies",
        "lifestyle",
        "sports"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1856, Charles Reade, chapter 24, in It Is Never Too Late to Mend",
          "text": "I play to win. I am playing for human lives. This, sir, is the torture, marks of which you have seen on the prisoners; but your inexperience will not detect at a glance all the diabolical ingenuity and cruelty that lurks in this piece of linen and these straps of leather.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1988, David Mahoney (chairman, Norton Simon Inc.), quoted in The Executive's Book of Quotations (Oxford, 1994), p. 298",
          "text": "\"The difference between playing to win and playing not to lose is the difference between the successful executive and the security-hunting, mediocre man."
        },
        {
          "ref": "1997, William Bernhardt, Naked Justice, page 355",
          "text": "And Bullock could care less about the judge's threats. Like always, he was playing to win.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2009 December 16, “People Who Mattered: Rahm Emanuel”, in Time",
          "text": "Rahm Emanuel was certainly a surprising choice for chief of staff — he's a hard-cussing, old-school-campaign knife fighter and pragmatic congressional arm twister who plays to win.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To make a special, determined effort to achieve general success or a particular goal, in life, in one's career, in negotiation, etc."
      ],
      "id": "en-play_to_win-en-verb-X3xDoO31",
      "links": [
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          "determined",
          "determined"
        ],
        [
          "effort",
          "effort"
        ],
        [
          "success",
          "success"
        ],
        [
          "goal",
          "goal"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, by extension) To make a special, determined effort to achieve general success or a particular goal, in life, in one's career, in negotiation, etc."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "broadly",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-play to win.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/6/62/En-au-play_to_win.ogg/En-au-play_to_win.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/En-au-play_to_win.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "play to win"
}
{
  "categories": [
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    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English terms with audio links",
    "English verbs"
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  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "to play to win",
      "tags": [
        "canonical"
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    },
    {
      "form": "plays to win",
      "tags": [
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    {
      "form": "playing to win",
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    {
      "form": "played to win",
      "tags": [
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    },
    {
      "form": "played to win",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*",
        "head": "to play to win"
      },
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      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
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      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations",
        "en:Sports"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1992 June 6, Clifton Brown, “Basketball: Blazers Beat Bulls in Overtime to Even Series”, in New York Times, retrieved 2012-07-29",
          "text": "[W]e just got totally outplayed. Instead of playing to win, we were playing not to lose.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To play in an especially competitive, committed manner, focused intently on winning."
      ],
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          "competitive",
          "competitive"
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        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(sports) To play in an especially competitive, committed manner, focused intently on winning."
      ],
      "topics": [
        "hobbies",
        "lifestyle",
        "sports"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English idioms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1856, Charles Reade, chapter 24, in It Is Never Too Late to Mend",
          "text": "I play to win. I am playing for human lives. This, sir, is the torture, marks of which you have seen on the prisoners; but your inexperience will not detect at a glance all the diabolical ingenuity and cruelty that lurks in this piece of linen and these straps of leather.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1988, David Mahoney (chairman, Norton Simon Inc.), quoted in The Executive's Book of Quotations (Oxford, 1994), p. 298",
          "text": "\"The difference between playing to win and playing not to lose is the difference between the successful executive and the security-hunting, mediocre man."
        },
        {
          "ref": "1997, William Bernhardt, Naked Justice, page 355",
          "text": "And Bullock could care less about the judge's threats. Like always, he was playing to win.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2009 December 16, “People Who Mattered: Rahm Emanuel”, in Time",
          "text": "Rahm Emanuel was certainly a surprising choice for chief of staff — he's a hard-cussing, old-school-campaign knife fighter and pragmatic congressional arm twister who plays to win.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To make a special, determined effort to achieve general success or a particular goal, in life, in one's career, in negotiation, etc."
      ],
      "links": [
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          "determined",
          "determined"
        ],
        [
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        [
          "goal",
          "goal"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, by extension) To make a special, determined effort to achieve general success or a particular goal, in life, in one's career, in negotiation, etc."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "broadly",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-play to win.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/6/62/En-au-play_to_win.ogg/En-au-play_to_win.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/En-au-play_to_win.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "do whatever it takes"
    },
    {
      "word": "pull out the stops"
    }
  ],
  "word": "play to win"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-06 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.