Word.ws English Dictionary

play God

play God verb: to act in ways commonly associated with or reserved for God, especially by scientific means, such as exercising omnipotence or excessive control over life and nature.

Verb

play God (third-person singular simple present plays God, present participle playing God, simple past and past participle played God)

  1. (derogatory, intransitive, usually) To act in ways commonly associated with or reserved for God, especially by scientific means, such as exercising omnipotence or excessive control over life and nature.
    • With all due respect, professor, do you really think that playing God and researching human immortality is a wise idea?

Forms of play God

third-person singular presentplays God
present participleplaying God
past participleplayed God
pastplayed God

Questions about play God

What does play God mean?
Play God means to act in ways commonly associated with or reserved for God, especially by scientific means, such as exercising omnipotence or excessive control over life and nature.
What part of speech is play God?
Play God is a verb.
What is the past tense of play God?
The past tense of play God is played God.

Words near play God in the dictionary

  1. play for a fool
  2. play for love
  3. play for time
  4. play full
  5. play games
  6. play God
  7. play gooseberry
  8. play group
  9. play groups
  10. play hard to get
  11. play hardball

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: play God (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-play God.ogg.

Cite this entry: “play God.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/play_god. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.