Informal An attempt to psychologically manipulate or intimidate someone.
The show boating, head games, phony fronts and near literal spider's webs tossed out as glistening and beautiful nets to capture the prize or the perceived prize always amazed me.2013, Sereena Nightshade, Black Market, →ISBN, page 226:
Sandra got the distinct impression that he was playing some kind of head game with her.2014, Derek J. Goodman, The Contamination of Sandra Wolfe, →ISBN:
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I don't do moody or wounded or stern. I can't play head games.2015, Michael Moorcock -, The Whispering Swarm: Book One of The Sanctuary of the White Friars, →ISBN:
2
A mental pursuit or obsession.
Another was able to bring into popularity puzzles, conundrums, and quiet " head games" or contests of memory and quick-wittedness.1900, The School Journal - Volume 61, page 669:
Learning is definitely a head game.2014, Kay J. Mahne, Capturing Minds by Capturing Hearts, →ISBN:
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Distance plays into the head game of “what if.”2014, Robert C. Vallieres, Jacquelyn M. Howard, Wounded Warriors: A Soldier's Story of Healing through Birds, →ISBN, page 28:
3
Skill at fellatio.
When it, come to sex don't test my skills 'Cause my head game have you head over heels2003, “Magic Stick”, in La Bella Mafia, performed by Lil' Kim and 50 Cent:
They both knew the reason he always came back. Her head game was excellent.2010, Wahida Clark, What's Really Hood!: A Collection of Tales from the Streets, →ISBN:
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She went to work like the cock-sucking champion that she was. This Bitch had always had crazy “head game.”2012, Jackie Ricci, Michael “El Jefe” Archer, Trunk-Space: The Retribution of a Psychopath, →ISBN, page 119:
head-game
verb
1
To psychologically manipulate; to gaslight.
Billie was still being persistently head-gamed by the male clientele.2000, Fiona Giles, Chick for a Day: What Would You Do If You Were One?, page 66:
In the cab back downtown,the one thing I head-gamed myself about was Jessica's sexual history.2001, Howard Roughan, The Up and Comer, →ISBN:
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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 24-7-365.1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest […], Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →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?2016, Andi Zeisler, We Were Feminists Once, →ISBN:
head-game
noun
› Alternative form of head game.
1
An attempt to psychologically manipulate.
They wanted him, he knew that, but they wanted to play head-games all the time.2012, K. B. Forrest, The Impossible Promise, →ISBN, page 82:
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.2012, Michael DiGiantommaso, Tennis Shenanigans and Booya Sandwiches, →ISBN:
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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.2014, Michael Oliver, Educated Smoker, →ISBN, page xvi:
2
A mental pursuit
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.2014, T.S. Bola, One Bad Night in Mexico, →ISBN: