"blame game" meaning in English

See blame game in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

IPA: /bleɪm ɡeɪm/ Audio: en-au-blame game.ogg [Australia] Forms: blame games [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} blame game (plural blame games)
  1. (informal, idiomatic) A situation in which people attempt to blame others rather than trying to resolve a problem. Tags: idiomatic, informal Related terms: finger-pointing, he said, she said, who shot John

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for blame game meaning in English (3.6kB)

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  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "blame games",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
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      "args": {},
      "expansion": "blame game (plural blame games)",
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1998 January, David Foster Wallace, “The Depressed Person”, in Harpers Magazine, page 58",
          "text": "She was, in addition, always extremely careful to share with the friends in her Support System her belief that it would be whiny and pathetic to play what she derisively called the \"Blame Game\" and blame her constant and indescribable adult pain on their parents' traumatic divorce or their cynical use of her.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2021 November 28, Peter Walker, “UK and France playing ‘blame game’ after Channel deaths, say Labour”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "The UK and France are “engaging in a blame game” over people making perilous Channel crossings in small boats, Labour has said, rather than sitting down together to try to work out a way to prevent more deaths.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022 April 6, Industry Insider, “Fixture clashes”, in RAIL, number 954, page 68",
          "text": "A blame game is taking place between Network Rail and the Football Association regarding the closure of the West Coast Main Line over the Easter Bank Holiday, which coincides with an FA Cup semi-final taking place at Wembley Stadium on April 16.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022 November 12, Toby Helm, Phillip Inman, “Revealed: the £30bn cost of Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "The estimates of the cost of “Trussonomics” will intensify a bitter blame game now being played out at the top of the Tory party.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 August 9, Raphael Rashid, “‘Worst nightmare’: South Korea mulls disastrous Scout jamboree”, in The Guardian, →ISSN",
          "text": "Political parties are ensnared in a blame game, with the ruling and opposition parties blaming each other. An audit will no doubt follow.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A situation in which people attempt to blame others rather than trying to resolve a problem."
      ],
      "id": "en-blame_game-en-noun-q-pyaYKq",
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        [
          "blame",
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          "resolve",
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal, idiomatic) A situation in which people attempt to blame others rather than trying to resolve a problem."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "finger-pointing"
        },
        {
          "word": "he said, she said"
        },
        {
          "word": "who shot John"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "informal"
      ]
    }
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  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/bleɪm ɡeɪm/"
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-au-blame game.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/2/2c/En-au-blame_game.ogg/En-au-blame_game.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/En-au-blame_game.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "blame game"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "blame games",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
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  ],
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      "args": {},
      "expansion": "blame game (plural blame games)",
      "name": "en-noun"
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "finger-pointing"
    },
    {
      "word": "he said, she said"
    },
    {
      "word": "who shot John"
    }
  ],
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        "English terms with IPA pronunciation",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1998 January, David Foster Wallace, “The Depressed Person”, in Harpers Magazine, page 58",
          "text": "She was, in addition, always extremely careful to share with the friends in her Support System her belief that it would be whiny and pathetic to play what she derisively called the \"Blame Game\" and blame her constant and indescribable adult pain on their parents' traumatic divorce or their cynical use of her.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2021 November 28, Peter Walker, “UK and France playing ‘blame game’ after Channel deaths, say Labour”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "The UK and France are “engaging in a blame game” over people making perilous Channel crossings in small boats, Labour has said, rather than sitting down together to try to work out a way to prevent more deaths.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022 April 6, Industry Insider, “Fixture clashes”, in RAIL, number 954, page 68",
          "text": "A blame game is taking place between Network Rail and the Football Association regarding the closure of the West Coast Main Line over the Easter Bank Holiday, which coincides with an FA Cup semi-final taking place at Wembley Stadium on April 16.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2022 November 12, Toby Helm, Phillip Inman, “Revealed: the £30bn cost of Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "The estimates of the cost of “Trussonomics” will intensify a bitter blame game now being played out at the top of the Tory party.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 August 9, Raphael Rashid, “‘Worst nightmare’: South Korea mulls disastrous Scout jamboree”, in The Guardian, →ISSN",
          "text": "Political parties are ensnared in a blame game, with the ruling and opposition parties blaming each other. An audit will no doubt follow.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A situation in which people attempt to blame others rather than trying to resolve a problem."
      ],
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          "resolve",
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal, idiomatic) A situation in which people attempt to blame others rather than trying to resolve a problem."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic",
        "informal"
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  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/bleɪm ɡeɪm/"
    },
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      "audio": "en-au-blame game.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/2/2c/En-au-blame_game.ogg/En-au-blame_game.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/En-au-blame_game.ogg",
      "tags": [
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      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "blame game"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.