play the field

Language: en

Meaning: (UK,horseracing)Tocut one's lossesby betting on every racehorse other than the crowd favorite.; (idiomatic)To have numerousromanticpartners, without or before committing exclusively to one.He says I'm the only one, but my friends say he'splaying the field.1980, Bernard Edwards, Nile Rodgers, “Upside Down”, inDiana, performed byDiana Ross:I know you got charm and appeal / You alwaysplay the field/ I'm crazy to think you're all mine2020January 28, Lizzie Cernik, “The power of celibacy: ‘Giving up sex was a massive relief’”, inThe Guardian‎[1]:In a world where you can get a sexual partner faster than a pizza delivery, it has never been easier toplay the field.2020August 4, Richard Conniff, “They may look goofy, but ostriches are nobody’s fool”, inNational Geographic Magazine‎[2]:But ostriches in breeding season are relentlessly promiscuous, with both males and females seeking liaisons with multiple partners. No doubt they have their reasons. But from an evolutionary perspective,playing the fieldis a way to get diverse DNA into as many nests as possible and compensate for the fact that most nests fail.

Examples:Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).

Validation Count: 0

Sourced from Wiktionary