Other forms: playthings
A plaything is a toy, or somebody treated as one. A child's plaything, treated as a plaything, mere playthings.
The literal sense is plain and slightly old-fashioned — toy is the ordinary word — and the figurative one carries real contempt: calling a person somebody's plaything says they are being used for amusement. A plaything of fate is the fixed literary phrase. Note that the word is simply play plus thing.
1nounplaythingA toy.
“The kitten turned a ball of wool into its favourite plaything.”
2nountreatedSomebody treated as an amusement.
“She felt she was just a plaything to him, something to amuse him when he was bored.”
plaything is a toy.
Play plus thing, a straightforward English compound. Thing once meant an assembly, which is a much older sense.
From play + thing.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire