as in exploits
to control or take advantage of by artful, unfair, or insidious means
played upon the customer's vanity to convince her to buy the expensive makeup kit
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Example Sentences
Recent Examples of Synonyms for plays (upon)
Verb
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My Pafology, later retitled Fuck, a book that exploits nearly every Black stereotype.—
Lauren Morrow
September 9,
Literary Hub,
9 Sep. 2025 -
Whether through cyber operations, intellectual property theft, or now these scam centers, China exploits grey zones that provide strategic advantage while maintaining deniability.—
Mike Kuiken,
MSNBC Newsweek,
8 Sep. 2025
Verb
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The patch was created by combining nanophotonics technology, which manipulates light at the nanometer scale (one-hundred-thousandth the thickness of a human hair) to read molecular properties, with microfluidics technology, which precisely controls sweat in channels thinner than a hair.—
Hannah Millington,
MSNBC Newsweek,
17 Sep. 2025
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But outside of the ring, Christy hides and represses her lesbianism and winds up marrying her trainer Jim Martin (Ben Foster), who manipulates and physically abuses her.—
Edward Segarra,
USA Today,
13 Sep. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Plays (upon).” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/plays%20%28upon%29. Accessed 21 Sep. 2025.
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