Word.ws English Dictionary

played dead

played dead is the simple past and past participle of play dead.

Meaning of play dead

Verb

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

  1. To lie very still, like a corpse.
    • Near-synonym: play doggo
  2. To act as though defeated while awaiting a chance to attack.

Questions about played dead

What is played dead the simple past and past participle of?
Played dead is the simple past and past participle of play dead.

Words near played dead in the dictionary

  1. played by ear
  2. played by the rules
  3. played cheat
  4. played chicken
  5. played Cupid
  6. played dead
  7. played dirty
  8. played doctor
  9. played down
  10. played dumb
  11. played fair

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: played dead (page history and authors); play dead (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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Cite this entry: “played dead.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/played_dead. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.