play by ear
Verb
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Verb
- (transitive and intransitive, of music) To play guided by one's musical ear, rather than from a written score.
- (transitive and intransitive, idiomatic) To do by guessing, intuition, or trial and error; to react to events as they occur; improvise
- If they ask for something we didn't prepare, we will have to play it by ear.
- (do by guessing, intuition, etc, reacting to events as they occur) fly by the seat of one's pants, make it up as one goes along, wing it
- French: jouer à l'oreille
- German: nach Gehör spielen
- Portuguese: tocar de memória (from memory), tocar de ouvido (in imitation of a performance)
- Spanish: tocar de memoria
- French: improviser
- German: improvisieren; spontan entscheiden; es auf sich zukommen lassen; es nehmen, wie es kommt; (colloquial) sehen; kucken
- Russian: де́йствовать по обстоятельство
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.003