overwordExplorer
ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

ploy.

A tactic, strategy, or scheme.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/plɔɪ/
  1. A tactic, strategy, or scheme.

    countable · uncountable
    The free T-shirt is really a ploy to get you inside to see their sales pitch.
  2. Sport; frolic.

    Scotland · UK · countable · dialectal · uncountable
  3. Employment.

    countable · obsolete · uncountable
Where this word comes from

Possibly from a shortened form of employ or deploy. Or from earlier ploye, from Middle English, borrowed from Middle French ployer (compare modern plier), from Latin plicāre.

verb/plɔɪ/
  1. To form a column from a line of troops on some designated subdivision.

Where this word comes from

Probably abbreviated from deploy.

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ploy studioploy workshello, ploy

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.