head-game

English

Noun

head-game (plural head-games)

1. Alternative form of head game
   1. An attempt to psychologically manipulate.
      • 2012, K. B. Forrest, The Impossible Promise, →ISBN, page 82:

        They wanted him, he knew that, but they wanted to play head-games all the time.

      • 2012, Michael DiGiantommaso, Tennis Shenanigans and Booya Sandwiches, →ISBN:

        Some guy's you play with, beat you every time, no matter what you do you simply can't win. Others, you're just that much better than they are, but it doesn't matter, you fit right, the games flow, no head-games and you enjoy every minute.

      • 2014, Michael Oliver, Educated Smoker, →ISBN, page xvi:

        Back when I was learning how to quit, it wasn't so easy to tell a friend or anyone else about any issues I may have had and why I needed to quit, because of all the head-games people appear to play.

   2. A mental pursuit
      • 2014, T.S. Bola, One Bad Night in Mexico, →ISBN:

        That is the problem with the “What if” head-game. It is played and replayed, again and again in one's head, but there is actually no solution that one would like to see.

Verb

head-game (third-person singular simple present head-games, present participle head-gaming, simple past and past participle head-gamed)

1. To psychologically manipulate; to gaslight.
   • 2000, Fiona Giles, Chick for a Day: What Would You Do If You Were One?, page 66:

     Billie was still being persistently head-gamed by the male clientele.

   • 2001, Howard Roughan, The Up and Comer, →ISBN:

     In the cab back downtown,the one thing I head-gamed myself about was Jessica's sexual history.

   • 1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest […], Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN:

     It was one reason he'd even been able to stick out his nine residential months here with twenty-one other newly detoxed housebreakers, hoods, whores, fired execs, Avon ladies, subway musicians, beer-bloated construction workers, vagrants, indignant car salesmen, bulimic trauma-mamas, bunko artists, mincing pillow-biters, North End hard guys, pimply kids with electric noserings, denialridden housewives and etc., all jonesing and head-gaming and mokus and grieving and basically whacked out and producing nonstopping output 24-7-365.

   • 2016, Andi Zeisler, We Were Feminists Once, →ISBN:

     Like UnREAL's Rachel, Pope's career success depends on her facility with lying, cheating, and head-gaming others—can that ever be truly progressive?

Anagrams

• game-head