Word.ws English Dictionary

playing second fiddle

playing second fiddle is the present participle and gerund of play second fiddle.

Meaning of play second fiddle

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To play a subsidiary or subordinate role to someone or something else.
    • She had been mistress of the farm so long that it would be hard for her to play second fiddle, but give her time and she'd be as good as new butter and as nice as ninepence, he said.1913, Ethel Carnie, Miss Nobody, page 68

Questions about playing second fiddle

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

Words near playing second fiddle in the dictionary

  1. playing pendulum
  2. playing piece
  3. playing politics
  4. playing possum
  5. playing pussy
  6. playing second fiddle
  7. playing silly buggers
  8. playing small
  9. playing someone at their own game
  10. playing someone like a bass fiddle
  11. playing someone like a fiddle

Source and license

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