play on/upon sth
— phrasal verb with play uk/pleɪ/us/pleɪ/verb
If you play on/upon someone's feelings, you encourage and make unfair use of these feelings in order to give yourself an advantage:
I hate marketing strategies that play on people's fears and prejudices.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Affecting and influencing
- across-the-board
- act
- affect
- applicability
- be/fall under sb's influence/spell idiom
- bear on sth
- cross
- force
- inroad
- inspiration
- instrumental
- jerk
- lead 1
- leave your/its mark on sb/sth idiom
- reverberate
- thing
- turn sb's head idiom
- unlock
- warp
- work against/for sb
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