VERB
-
set into opposition or rivalry
He plays his two children off against each other
pit a chess player against the Russian champion
let them match their best athletes against ours
How To Use play off In A Sentence
- We will see more when they play offensive football. The Sun
- And I'd like to see the ice hockey team win the play offs as well.
- Violetta's fioritura, Alfredo's tenor ardency, his father's baritonal sterness, the tripping flute thirds of the perennial parties and balls: all those familiar elements start to play off of each other, turning up at inappropriate moments with an ironic charge, standing in for dialogue and plot rather than simply advancing them. Archive 2008-03-01
- The clamshell phone's large display offers a 256.000 colors screen resolution and 3 triple digital zoom that brings details into focus.
- The Blood Brothers' two vocalists play off one another, entwining their lightspeed lyrics into one orgiastic mass of sound.
- It goes without saying that, for a golf event to be contested fairly, every competitor must play off the same tees.
- The Dinamo Kiev striker scored the winner against Turkey in the play off first leg and then got the vital equaliser in Istanbul to level the scores on the night and put Latvia ahead on aggregate.
- What happens when they decide to play offense?
- So I thought it best to confess the whole fact; upon which the inquisitress burst out into a loud laugh on the success of her artifice, which she was led to play off upon me from the mere circumstance of, having smelt musk in the room. ' Memoirs of Aaron Burr
- The play offers some illuminating insights into the King's character.