Word.ws English Dictionary

play with fire

play with fire verb: to put oneself in a precarious situation with a high risk of getting harmed, particularly emotionally or financially.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To put oneself in a precarious situation with a high risk of getting harmed, particularly emotionally or financially.
    • I'm telling you, if you sign that paper, you're playing with fire.
    • Play with fire and you get burned.

play with fire meaning in Hindi, Urdu, Telugu and Tagalog

play with fire in Hindi

put oneself in a precarious situation
आग से खेलना āg se khelnā

play with fire in Urdu

put oneself in a precarious situation
آگ سے کھیلنا āg se khelnā

play with fire in Telugu

put oneself in a precarious situation
నిప్పుతో చెలగాటం nipputō celagāṭaṁ

play with fire in Tagalog

put oneself in a precarious situation
makipaglaro ng apoy
More languagesFewer languages
play with fire in Arabic
لَعِبَ بِالنَّار laʕiba bi-n-nār

Forms of play with fire

third-person singular presentplays with fire
present participleplaying with fire
past participleplayed with fire
pastplayed with fire

Questions about play with fire

What does play with fire mean?
Play with fire means to put oneself in a precarious situation with a high risk of getting harmed, particularly emotionally or financially.
What is play with fire in Hindi?
Play with fire in Hindi is आग से खेलना (āg se khelnā). See Play with fire meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is play with fire?
Play with fire is a verb.
What is the past tense of play with fire?
The past tense of play with fire is played with fire.

Words near play with fire in the dictionary

  1. play well with others
  2. play with
  3. play with a full deck
  4. play with edge-tools
  5. play with edged tools
  6. play with fire
  7. play with house money
  8. play with oneself
  9. play'd
  10. play-act
  11. play-acted

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: play with fire (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 with fire.ogg.

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