Word.ws English Dictionary

playing doctor

playing doctor is the present participle and gerund of play doctor.

Meaning of play doctor

Verb

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

  1. To pretend to be doctor and patient as a form of child play.
  2. (usually) To explore or sexually engage with another person's private parts, particularly in the context of roleplay of a medical nature.
    • […] Jimmie volunteered, […] "How can you have kids if you don't play doctor?"1931 October, R. L. Whitely, “Interviewing the Problem Boy”, in E. George Payne, editor, The Journal of Educational Sociology, volume V, number 2, Albany, page 99

See all 3 meanings of play doctor

Questions about playing doctor

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

Words near playing doctor in the dictionary

  1. playing cheat
  2. playing chicken
  3. playing Cupid
  4. playing dead
  5. playing dirty
  6. playing doctor
  7. playing down
  8. playing dumb
  9. playing fair
  10. playing fast and loose
  11. playing favorites

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: playing doctor (page history and authors); play doctor (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 doctor.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/playing_doctor. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.