Dictionary
Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.
play to win en · VERB
Pronunciation
Meanings
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To play in an especially competitive, committed manner, focused intently on winning.
"[W]e just got totally outplayed. Instead of playing to win, we were playing not to lose."
1992 June 6, Clifton Brown, “Basketball: Blazers Beat Bulls in Overtime to Even Series”, in New York Times, retrieved 29 Jul 2012:
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(broadly, idiomatic) To make a special, determined effort to achieve general success or a particular goal, in life, in one's career, in negotiation, etc.
Rahm Emanuel was certainly a surprising choice for chief of staff — he's a hard-cussing, old-school-campaign knife fighter and pragmatic congressional arm twister who plays to win.
2009 December 16, “People Who Mattered: Rahm Emanuel”, in Time:"I play to win. I am playing for human lives. This, sir, is the torture, marks of which you have seen on the prisoners; but your inexperience will not detect at a glance all the diabolical ingenuity and cruelty that lurks in this piece of linen and these straps of leather."
1856, Charles Reade, chapter 24, in It Is Never Too Late to Mend:And Bullock could care less about the judge's threats. Like always, he was playing to win.
1997, William Bernhardt, Naked Justice, →ISBN, page 355:"The difference between playing to win and playing not to lose is the difference between the successful executive and the security-hunting, mediocre man.
1988, David Mahoney (chairman, Norton Simon Inc.), quoted in The Executive's Book of Quotations (Oxford, 1994), p. 298
Forms
Synonyms
do whatever it takes · pull out the stops