"play God" meaning in English

See play God in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Audio: En-au-play God.ogg [Australia] Forms: plays God [present, singular, third-person], playing God [participle, present], played God [participle, past], played God [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} play God (third-person singular simple present plays God, present participle playing God, simple past and past participle played God)
  1. (intransitive, usually derogatory) To act in ways commonly associated with or reserved for God, especially by scientific means, such as exercising omnipotence or excessive control over life and nature. Tags: derogatory, intransitive, usually Related terms: God complex Translations (make life-and-death decisions): jugar a ser Déu (Catalan), giocare a fare Dio (Italian), 神を演じる (kami wo enjiru) (alt: かみをえんじる) (Japanese), brincar de ser Deus (Portuguese), jugar a ser Dios (Spanish)
    Sense id: en-play_God-en-verb-qJnsVzqQ Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for play God meaning in English (2.4kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "plays God",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "playing God",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "played God",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "played God",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "play God (third-person singular simple present plays God, present participle playing God, simple past and past participle played God)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "With all due respect, professor, do you really think that playing God and researching human immortality is a wise idea?",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To act in ways commonly associated with or reserved for God, especially by scientific means, such as exercising omnipotence or excessive control over life and nature."
      ],
      "id": "en-play_God-en-verb-qJnsVzqQ",
      "links": [
        [
          "derogatory",
          "derogatory"
        ],
        [
          "God",
          "God"
        ],
        [
          "omnipotence",
          "omnipotence"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(intransitive, usually derogatory) To act in ways commonly associated with or reserved for God, especially by scientific means, such as exercising omnipotence or excessive control over life and nature."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "God complex"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "derogatory",
        "intransitive",
        "usually"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "ca",
          "lang": "Catalan",
          "sense": "make life-and-death decisions",
          "word": "jugar a ser Déu"
        },
        {
          "code": "it",
          "lang": "Italian",
          "sense": "make life-and-death decisions",
          "word": "giocare a fare Dio"
        },
        {
          "alt": "かみをえんじる",
          "code": "ja",
          "lang": "Japanese",
          "roman": "kami wo enjiru",
          "sense": "make life-and-death decisions",
          "word": "神を演じる"
        },
        {
          "code": "pt",
          "lang": "Portuguese",
          "sense": "make life-and-death decisions",
          "word": "brincar de ser Deus"
        },
        {
          "code": "es",
          "lang": "Spanish",
          "sense": "make life-and-death decisions",
          "word": "jugar a ser Dios"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-play God.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/a/a4/En-au-play_God.ogg/En-au-play_God.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/En-au-play_God.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "play God"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "plays God",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "playing God",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "played God",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "played God",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "play God (third-person singular simple present plays God, present participle playing God, simple past and past participle played God)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "God complex"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English derogatory terms",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English intransitive verbs",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with usage examples",
        "English verbs"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "With all due respect, professor, do you really think that playing God and researching human immortality is a wise idea?",
          "type": "example"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To act in ways commonly associated with or reserved for God, especially by scientific means, such as exercising omnipotence or excessive control over life and nature."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "derogatory",
          "derogatory"
        ],
        [
          "God",
          "God"
        ],
        [
          "omnipotence",
          "omnipotence"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(intransitive, usually derogatory) To act in ways commonly associated with or reserved for God, especially by scientific means, such as exercising omnipotence or excessive control over life and nature."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "derogatory",
        "intransitive",
        "usually"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-play God.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/a/a4/En-au-play_God.ogg/En-au-play_God.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/En-au-play_God.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "ca",
      "lang": "Catalan",
      "sense": "make life-and-death decisions",
      "word": "jugar a ser Déu"
    },
    {
      "code": "it",
      "lang": "Italian",
      "sense": "make life-and-death decisions",
      "word": "giocare a fare Dio"
    },
    {
      "alt": "かみをえんじる",
      "code": "ja",
      "lang": "Japanese",
      "roman": "kami wo enjiru",
      "sense": "make life-and-death decisions",
      "word": "神を演じる"
    },
    {
      "code": "pt",
      "lang": "Portuguese",
      "sense": "make life-and-death decisions",
      "word": "brincar de ser Deus"
    },
    {
      "code": "es",
      "lang": "Spanish",
      "sense": "make life-and-death decisions",
      "word": "jugar a ser Dios"
    }
  ],
  "word": "play God"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-16 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (e268c0e and 304864d). 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.