play down

1. 1.

   understate the importance or quality of

   “he played down his royal ancestry”

   Synonymsbackgrounddownplay

   Antonymsplay up

   Broaderstress

   Narrowerwave offsoft-pedal

Questions about play down

What does play down mean?

play down means "understate the importance or quality of".

What is another word for play down?

Close synonyms include background, downplay. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

What is the opposite of play down?

The recorded antonyms are play up.

Is play down a common word?

play down is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.