Word.ws English Dictionary

playing with a full deck

playing with a full deck is the present participle and gerund of play with a full deck.

Meaning of play with a full deck

Verb

play with a full deck (third-person singular simple present plays with a full deck, present participle playing with a full deck, simple past and past participle played with a full deck)

  1. (Canada, US, idiomatic) To behave in a manner suggesting that one is of normal intelligence, alert, and mentally stable.
    • I think we all realize he's not playing with a full deck.1965, George Carlinhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu-trYf96xo#t=268
  2. To play a game with the availability of a team's full roster of players.
    • The Bulls were closer to playing with a full deck Monday night when coach Tom Thibodeau announced that Derrick Rose and Pau Gasol would be in the starting lineup.2014 November 24, Fred Mitchell, “Monday's recap: Bulls 97, Jazz 95”, in Chicago Tribune, retrieved 14 Oct 2015
    Synonyms:
    sane

Questions about playing with a full deck

What is playing with a full deck the present participle and gerund of?
Playing with a full deck is the present participle and gerund of play with a full deck.

Words near playing with a full deck in the dictionary

  1. playing up Old Gooseberry
  2. playing up to
  3. playing upon
  4. playing well with others
  5. playing with
  6. playing with a full deck
  7. playing with edge-tools
  8. playing with edged tools
  9. playing with fire
  10. playing with house money
  11. playing-card

Source and license

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