(n.) A thing to play with; a toy; anything that serves to amuse.
Example Sentences:
(1) The idea that abortion – the right to control one's own body – is but a plaything for male politicians, such as Jeremy Hunt, to signal their credentials is not new.
(2) Business leaders worried about what this would do to our international reputation, what it said about our consistency, whether or not it made the peerage system look like a political plaything.
(3) Abbott said he would fight the leadership challenge because Australia needed “strong and stable government” and the prime ministership was “not a prize or a plaything to be demanded”.
(4) What are the life-enhancing functions that will compel us to pay for these new playthings?
(5) The New York Daily News – neglected plaything of forgotten Canadian media magnate Mort Zuckerman – has also flipped and endorsed Mitt Romney in this election.
(6) And to top it all, this amazing journey – from plaything to instrument of social change – seems to have happened in a matter of months.
(7) The Troika is like a cat with a mouse, tormenting then eventually killing its plaything While ballymichael flags up the political hurdles that leaders are struggling to overcome: Germany is in the middle of its budget ratification process, and Schäuble yesterday was understandably being rhetorically kicked all around the Bundestag Chamber for not balancing the budget, even when the circumstances are so favourable, by the SPD and Greens.
(8) Depending on your perspective, it is abstract or concrete, vague or meaningful, something to undermine or nurture, a fair or an unfair plaything of politicians and others, and so forth.
(9) Thames Water, a plaything of private equity, with its ultimate parent company domiciled in "tax-efficient" Luxembourg, is loaded with debt – and only able to build the planned super-sewer with government guarantees because it has so over-distributed its profits as dividends.
(10) In children 0-4 years of age household and child furniture, constructional features of the house and corrosives, hot liquids and heating equipment were the most common products causing accidents, whereas in children 5-15 years of age playthings and sports equipment as well as constructional features of the house were involved in a higher percentage of accidents.
(11) Nothing enrages some men – for it was always men – more than the prospect of a woman in their toy box, sharing their playthings.
(12) This case is political and unfortunately my clients have been held hostage, and they have become playthings for the government.
(13) In the 1970's, with no such restrictions, the New York Cosmos prompted an unsustainable arms race in the NASL when media mogul Steve Ross ran the club as a plaything and brought the likes of Pele, Beckenbauer and Chinaglia — and crucially titles — to New York City.
(14) King said the uber-wealthy's choice of playthings to splash their cash on has remained pretty constant with holiday homes, superyachts and private jets.
(15) If you don't respect yourself, if you don't project your own authority, how do you expect not to end up a plaything of the bloviators and the rent seekers and people who would move you about like a piece on a chessboard?
(16) The Scottish government is not a plaything for bored royals on a mission,” Graham Smith, the group’s chief executive, told the Herald.
(17) It turns them into our playthings, always-accessible automatons onto whom we can project all our fantasies.
(18) Is it the free-at-last nation which is "no longer a plaything of the US military adventure," as one Labour MP put it on Friday.
(19) Like many of the world’s masterpieces, it’s now the private plaything of the vastly rich.
(20) • Robots make great toys too, and CES was jam-packed full of tech-infused playthings headed for this year's Christmas lists
Toy
Definition:
(v. t.) A plaything for children; a bawble.
(v. t.) A thing for amusement, but of no real value; an article of trade of little value; a trifle.
(v. t.) A wild fancy; an odd conceit; idle sport; folly; trifling opinion.
(v. t.) Amorous dalliance; play; sport; pastime.
(v. t.) An old story; a silly tale.
(v. t.) A headdress of linen or woolen, that hangs down over the shoulders, worn by old women of the lower classes; -- called also toy mutch.
(v. i.) To dally amorously; to trifle; to play.
(v. t.) To treat foolishly.
Example Sentences:
(1) To become president of Afghanistan , Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai changed his wardrobe and modified his name, gave up coffee, embraced a man he once denounced as a “known killer” and even toyed with anger management classes to tame a notorious temper.
(2) The "Dream Toys" for Christmas list includes a few old favourites alongside some new, and sparkly, additions.
(3) In a statement, Fisher Price said: “We recently learned of a security vulnerability with our Fisher-Price WiFi-connected Smart Toy Bear.
(4) Pretty much every major toy brand, as well as apps like Angry Birds and Talking Friends, are spawning “webisodes” on YouTube as well as traditional ads, which often sit side-by-side within the same channel.
(5) An observational study was made of 1-2-year-old children, and of mentally handicapped children functioning at a similar level, to determine the extent to which they involved themselves in play with toys and other objects and the extent to which their day was "empty".
(6) The only 2 significant sex-of-parent x sex-of-child effects occurred at 18 months; fathers gave fewer positive reactions to boys engaging in female-typical toy play, and mothers gave more instruction to girls when they attempted to communicate.
(7) Incidental teaching and traditional discrete-trial procedures were used to teach two children with autism the expressive use of two color adjectives to describe preferred toys and food items.
(8) You can use absolutely anything - an unwanted T-shirt, some old curtains, something you picked up in a charity shop ... Garish 70s-style prints you probably wouldn't dream of wearing work surprisingly well in soft toys: they are cute, they can pull it off.
(9) In both experiments, videotapes of model monkeys behaving fearfully were spliced so that it appeared that the models were reacting fearfully either to fear-relevant stimuli (toy snakes or a toy crocodile), or to fear-irrelevant stimuli (flowers or a toy rabbit).
(10) Soft organic material (meat, cucumber peels) was found in four patients, chicken bones in six, pins and needles in six, other nonorganic materials (toys, stone, broken thermometer) in six.
(11) There are signs that Disney intends to respect its expensive new toy.
(12) However, when toys were absent, there were no significant differences in visual attention between ADHD and normal boys.
(13) White is doing his own bit to turn back the clock: at his gigs, he enforces a strict ban on the audience shooting pictures or video; at home, he only allows his children – Scarlett, eight, and Hank, six – to play with mechanical toys.
(14) Cars, furniture, books, dishes, TVs, highways, buildings, jewellery, toys and even electricity would not exist without water.
(15) Although it remains unclear why he chose to place the muddled woman in a kitchen – clinging to her mug and surrounded by children's toys – as opposed to say, in a laboratory or a truck, he claims all the words were authentically spoken by "women in dozens of focus groups around the country", prior to being stitched together in this latest triumph for the fashionable, verbatim school of drama.
(16) Many parents think hard about what kind of books to buy for their children; mull over the suitability of various TV shows and films; and compare the educational and entertainment value of different toys.
(17) That found parents play an important role in the choice of toys and “they consider construction toys to stimulate creativity and can be used differently each time a child plays with them”, the ONS said.
(18) The provision of structure in the form of thematically related toy sets, instructions, and modeling did not reduce the discrepancy between demonstrated play behaviors of toddlers with SLI-E and their normally developing peers.
(19) Now they’re having to downsize, changing cities and dispose of all their toys, like their big trucks and Ski-doos, but nobody wants to buy that stuff because they can’t afford it either.” “It’s very depressing,” says Seibel, who’s still unemployed despite sending several hundreds of resumes, including to McDonalds, where he was told he was overqualified.
(20) Parents' initial nonverbal responses to the toys, however, were more positive when the toys were stereotyped for the child's and parent's gender than when they were not.