Word.ws English Dictionary

playing with fire

playing with fire is the present participle and gerund of play with fire.

Meaning of play with fire

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To put oneself in a precarious situation with a high risk of getting harmed, particularly emotionally or financially.
    • I'm telling you, if you sign that paper, you're playing with fire.

Questions about playing with fire

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

Words near playing with fire in the dictionary

  1. playing well with others
  2. playing with
  3. playing with a full deck
  4. playing with edge-tools
  5. playing with edged tools
  6. playing with fire
  7. playing with house money
  8. playing-card
  9. playing-cards
  10. playingly
  11. playings

Source and license

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