play possum
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
pretend to be dead or asleep to avoid danger
Literally: play opossum
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Hold 'em under your tongue and play possum.
I had, of course, been told by my surgeon that everything he could see he had taken out, On the other hand, I had chosen to explore further on my own and I was learning that cancer has this nasty habit of playing possum.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “play possum” mean?
pretend to be dead or asleep to avoid danger Literally: play opossum
Is “play possum” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.