Word.ws English Dictionary

plays dead

plays dead is the third-person singular simple present indicative of play dead.

Meaning of play dead

Verb

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

  1. To lie very still, like a corpse.
    • Near-synonym: play doggo
  2. To act as though defeated while awaiting a chance to attack.

Questions about plays dead

What is plays dead the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Plays dead is the third-person singular simple present indicative of play dead.

Words near plays dead in the dictionary

  1. plays by ear
  2. plays by the rules
  3. plays cheat
  4. plays chicken
  5. plays Cupid
  6. plays dead
  7. plays dirty
  8. plays doctor
  9. plays down
  10. plays dumb
  11. plays fair

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: plays dead (page history and authors); play dead (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: “plays dead.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/plays_dead. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.