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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
play-acting
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ I was no longer responsible for the pretending, the elaborate play-acting.
▪ Instead of plays being acted by the city craftsmen once a year, we've made a craft of play-acting.
▪ What Yeroen hoped to gain by his play-acting is not clear, though it may have helped to defuse further aggression.

Usage examples of "play-acting".

Jinzler had discarded his earlier layered robe-tunic in favor of something simpler and less constrictive, and Luke found himself wondering if the older man was expecting dirt and close quarters aboard the Dreadnaught or whether he was just tiring of his ambassadorial play-acting.

They did it good and proper, with zest and effectiveness that no onlooking Rigellian could possibly mistake for a piece of dramatic play-acting.

But King Looie was only play-acting, he was like a whoreson actor in a Southwark theatre, got up in a gaudy costume, acting the way he imagined that a warrior King might act.

Victimized by a grievous low blow, the white king staggers, gasps his surrender, and topples off the board,' he said, play-acting his own narration as he went.

I would have thought she was play-acting, or exaggerating, but I had to believe it, when the waiters carried her off stage and gave her back to her friends at their table.