Word.ws English Dictionary

playing dead

playing dead is the present participle and gerund 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 playing dead

What is playing dead the present participle and gerund of?
Playing dead is the present participle and gerund of play dead.

Words near playing dead in the dictionary

  1. playing card
  2. playing cards
  3. playing cheat
  4. playing chicken
  5. playing Cupid
  6. playing dead
  7. playing dirty
  8. playing doctor
  9. playing down
  10. playing dumb
  11. playing fair

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: playing 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: “playing dead.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/playing_dead. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.