play along meaning and examples

2025-09-21

Meaning

Play along means to pretend to agree with or cooperate with someone, often to avoid conflict or to keep a situation going smoothly.
It can also mean to join in a game, joke, or activity in a cooperative way.

Part of speech: phrasal verb (intransitive)
Typical structures:
- play along with sb/sth → to pretend to agree or cooperate
- just play along → to go along with a situation, even if you don’t fully agree

She didn’t believe his story, but she played along to avoid an argument.
The teacher decided to play along with the prank until the students revealed the truth.
If the boss thinks this is a good idea, we should just play along for now.
He smiled and played along, though he knew it was a trick.
The children asked him to be the villain, so he happily played along in their game.
I’ll play along until we find out what they’re planning.