Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
🧪 To experiment 💔 To cheat
to play around

to play around

8 7.9
To have sex with someone outside your relationship
  • phrasal verb
  • /pleɪ əˈraʊnd/
  • NSFW
translation icon : poner los cuernos
  • She'd lose face playing around with a foreigner.
  • just playing around
  • start playing around
  • think he is playing around

Well, the, the Roman Empire played around with monogamy, but they were never very serious about it.

Examples

  • I know you play around.

    The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat (1974)

  • -She said she was getting married... in a couple of months and she wanted to stop playing around.

    The Gift (2000)

  • I remember saying that if he wants to date others or even play around with that, he is not the right man for me.

    Blog text (18)

  • I understand you wanting to play around with her.

    A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

  • He asked for it, playing around with you.

    The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)

  • If she wanted to play around, Mrs. Merryman, she could do better than that, with her looks.

    That Brennan Girl (1946)

  • Like this one guy who became impotent and his wife started playing around.

    Fiction book (1996)

  • We'd both been playing around, and you never wanted children.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • She's been playing around with you.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • She kept playing around with her coworker's husband, despite knowing the risks involved.

Synonyms

to cheat on
vsto play around
  • NSFW
323 3.3

To have sex with someone who is not your partner

is the informal conversational term for the same act
to cheat
vsto play around
  • NSFW
265 4.0

To have sex with someone who is not your partner

is the informal way to describe that unfaithful behavior
to fool around
vsto play around
  • NSFW
35 8.3

To have sex with someone who is not your husband or wife

is the same meaning but less informal
to play the field
vsto play around
  • Informal
13 7.7

Date several different people without wanting a serious relationship

is about being unfaithful inside a relationship rather than noncommittal dating
to sleep around
vsto play around
  • NSFW
10 8.8

To have sex with many people without a steady partner

is used to mean sexual unfaithfulness within a relationship rather than casual multiple partners
sleeping around
vsto play around
  • NSFW
9 9.1

Having sex with many different people without a steady partner

focuses on being unfaithful in a committed relationship rather than promiscuity

Antonyms

to commit
706 3.4

To give time, money, or effort to something

How Faithful

to cheat on
  • NSFW
323 3.3
to play around
  • NSFW
8 7.9
to sleep around
  • NSFW
10 8.8

Surface Forms

play around infinitive
played around past
played around past participle
playing around present participle
plays around third person singular

Morphology

play + around

The verb 'play' (behave unseriously or toy with) combined with 'around' (in different directions/with others) gives a loose, partially predictable sense of non-serious sexual/romantic behaviour, so a learner might guess a general idea of casualness. However the specific sense 'to have affairs/commit adultery' is colloquial and sufficiently idiomatic that it is not fully derivable from the constituents without prior exposure, and cross-linguistic realizations vary.

Etymology

Play around comes from the image of someone who plays with different people around them, treating romance like a game instead of being serious. That's why it means 'to have romantic or sexual relations outside a committed relationship'.