Word.ws English Dictionary

playing house

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

Meaning of play house

Verb

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

  1. (children's games) To pretend to be a family in the household, acting out housekeeping and different family roles.
    • They can keep all their things there and play house in their own way.
  2. To live as if married without actually being legally married, cohabit
    • Though she flaunted her affair with TJ, Grace never admitted in print that she and George had “played house” before their marriage. Instead, she claimed they were married in 19421981, Emily Toth, Inside Peyton Place: the life of Grace Metalious, page 209

See all 5 meanings of play house

Questions about playing house

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

Words near playing house in the dictionary

  1. playing havoc
  2. playing hell with
  3. playing hob with
  4. playing hooky
  5. playing host to
  6. playing house
  7. playing in
  8. playing in Peoria
  9. playing into someone's hand
  10. playing into someone's hands
  11. playing into the hand of

Source and license

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