noun

• A course of psychologically manipulative behaviour intended to discomfit another person or gain an advantage over them.

  ‘I have been playing mind games to get him to invite us’

  More example sentences

  • ‘I think it's a psychological mind game he's still going for the drivers' title.’
  • ‘Tonight's State of Origin match between Queensland and New South Wales, for instance, is actually the culmination of a sophisticated mind game that's been going on for three weeks.’
  • ‘This is not a name-naming game - but is it a mind game?’
  • ‘Swingley had seen Rick Swenson, a five-time Iditarod winner, pull psych jobs on others, so he decided to try a little mind game of his own.’
  • ‘His latest attempt to psyche out Harrison has seen the 32-year-old veteran of 75 fights take an opposite tack from his previous mind game.’
  • ‘According to the soldiers themselves, cross-dressing is a military mind game, a tactic that instills fear in their rivals.’
  • ‘Whatever it takes to convince workers to do whatever it takes to get the company's job done really is a mind game.’
  • ‘It's just a pathetic mind game played by town planners who get their kicks by persecuting motorists.’
  • ‘Stettner plays up the sexual tension between the two women and maps out an impressive mind game here.’
  • ‘Whether Brooks' comments were part of a mind game, trying to get Canada to change its game because he knew his defensemen wouldn't escape under a sustained attack by the big Canadian forwards, remains a mystery.’
  • ‘Championship snooker is the ultimate mind game in which the constant challenge, in Davis' classic phrase, is ‘to play as if it means nothing when it means everything’.’
  • ‘See, the Americans are insisting that the Australians will be tough, but the Aussies think it's all a mind game meant to put the pressure on them.’
  • ‘For Rhoda, a ‘game’ is specifically a mind game, connected to lying, performing, and power.’
  • ‘At Albrecht Oval a real psychological mind game was played.’
  • ‘It also tries to shy away from the gruesomeness of multiple murders and the bug-eyed maniac behind them to focus on a kind of psychological mind game where cat and mouse may be interchangeable.’
  • ‘This kind of mind game ensures the girls are kept enslaved.’
  • ‘I still think you're all playing some kind of mind game with us.’
  • ‘Are you trying to tell me something I already know, or is this some kind of hypnotic mind game manufactured and conceived by desk bound salesmen to promote their latest products?’
  • ‘He might simply be a loner, on the lam, already involved - or married - or playing some mind game.’
  • ‘She shouldn't be giving me any kind of compassion like this, maybe she is trying to play some kind of sick mind game.’