to play along
54
4.2
- phrasal verb
- /pleɪ əˈlɔŋ/
- Informal
:
seguir la corriente
- And if anyone out there playing along gets this, you are my best friend.
- just play along
- willing to play along
- Okay, I'll play along
And then when people hear like a keyword, they can like, they can play along.
- And then when people hear like a keyword, they can like, they can play along.
- But I I remember learning that it was more important to play along than to fight for what I thought I knew.
- And again, when I thought this was all just not serious and a joke, I would play along.
- OK, all those two classic fall things, and we'll choose which is our fall favorite, and our audience gets to play along, too.
- And if we just keep playing along and every time, you know, Ukraine puts their hand out, we put money in there just to kind of keep this going.
- Now it's clear that Juan wants to keep his poker face pretty good at it, and it doesn't want to play along with the teasing and hinting game that Michael Dell was maybe going for.
Examples
-
Why don't you just play along with this, okay?
-
He had no intention of joining their plan, but he thought it best to play along for now.
-
Feel free to play along at home as well.
-
Should you keep playing along with all of that?
-
Thanks for coming every weekend and playing along with us.
-
The president himself played along with it.
-
I was just playing along to protect you.
-
If he wants to play the hero, you play along with him.
-
I had to play along so that I can get you out.
-
All right, I'll play along.
Synonyms
144
3.5
To pretend to agree with someone to avoid trouble
33
4.6
To work with others and do what they want
5
3.2
To work well with other people in a team
3
8.2
Agree with others to avoid conflict
Antonyms
How Cooperative
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to perform music as an accompaniment' is directly derivable from combining 'play' (perform music) with 'along' (together with/alongside). This verb + along construction commonly signals doing an action together and is cross-linguistically straightforward, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents will readily infer the meaning.
Etymology
Play along comes from the simple idea of joining a game or a scene: to play means to act or take part, and along means with the others. If you 'play along' you act like you agree and keep the story or plan going, so it now means 'to cooperate' or 'pretend to agree'.