playact
to engage in make-believe.
to be insincere or affected in speech, manner, etc.: It's hard to get away with playacting with members of one's own family.
to perform in a play.
to dramatize (something): They playacted the movements of a burglar.
Origin of playact
1Other words from playact
- playacting, noun
- playactor, noun
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use playact in a sentence
You frenetically play-act while you feel your soul is dying.
Rich people need to play-act their financial largesse, so we can hate them for it.
Sting and Hillary Are Just Like You: How the Very Rich Play at Being Very Ordinary | Tim Teeman | June 24, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTYou're such a sinful old 'ypocrite, that you play-act before yourself, I do believe.
The Lord of the Sea | M. P. ShielIt had been helpful and even laudable to play-act the chief scenes when the story was beginning, but now they had no time.
Red Cap Tales | Samuel Rutherford CrockettI thought he could play-act the thing in his mind too well ever to be the thing itself.
Gilian The Dreamer | Neil Munro
I am merely vexed that you should play-act to me, and to Bezobiedoff, and to yourself.
Youth | Leo Tolstoy
British Dictionary definitions for play-act
(intr) to pretend or make believe
(intr) to behave in an overdramatic or affected manner
to act in or as in (a play)
Derived forms of play-act
- play-acting, noun
- play-actor, noun
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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