play off

1. 1.

   set into opposition or rivalry

   “let them match their best athletes against ours”

   “pit a chess player against the Russian champion”

   “He plays his two children off against each other”

   Synonymspitopposematch

   Broaderconfront

Questions about play off

What does play off mean?

play off means "set into opposition or rivalry".

What is another word for play off?

Close synonyms include pit, oppose, match. 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.

Is play off a common word?

play off 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.