Word.ws English Dictionary

play the victim card

play the victim card verb: to portray oneself as an innocent victim instead of taking responsibility.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To portray oneself as an innocent victim instead of taking responsibility.
    • The serial killer played the victim card as he blamed others for his actions.

Forms of play the victim card

third-person singular presentplays the victim card
present participleplaying the victim card
past participleplayed the victim card
pastplayed the victim card

Questions about play the victim card

What does play the victim card mean?
Play the victim card means to portray oneself as an innocent victim instead of taking responsibility.
What part of speech is play the victim card?
Play the victim card is a verb.
What is the past tense of play the victim card?
The past tense of play the victim card is played the victim card.

Words near play the victim card in the dictionary

  1. play the race card
  2. play the same tape
  3. play the skin flute
  4. play the something card
  5. play the system
  6. play the victim card
  7. play the wag
  8. play the white man
  9. play therapies
  10. play therapy
  11. play through

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: play the victim card (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-play the victim card.wav.

Cite this entry: “play the victim card.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/play_the_victim_card. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.