headgame

English

Noun

headgame (plural headgames)

Alternative form of head game
1. An attempt to psychologically manipulate
  - 1990, Giovanni Dotoli, Giovanni Bonanno, Canada ieri e oggi 2:
    To celebrate literature which is headgame, to banish the heart's journey from the page, to lead into retreat that which Faulkner called Literature's sole concern, the heart in conflict with itself, does not save lives or bring the news or alter by even a syllable a culture's top-40 or next one-thousand tunes.
  - 1999 -, Alex Matthews, Wanton's Web, →ISBN, page 245:
    And that whole long story about Zach — that was just some kind of headgame?"
  - 2013, Iris Smyles, Iris Has Free Time, →ISBN, page 83:
    I wasn't trying to be cruel. It's just, with all the waiting-by-the-phone stuff that happens when you're twenty-five—the headgames, the guys never being honest, or their acting like you're trying to do something awful to them just by caring—a girl's got to take her power back.
  - 2016, Scotty Weeks, A Familiar Face: And other stories, →ISBN:
    It struck Jill that he was serious, that maybe this wasn't some sort of rich-guy headgame.
2. A mental pursuit
  - 2003, Science-fiction Studies - Volume 30, Issue 2, page 301:
    Bloch's utopia is not More's headgame. It is real.
  - 2007, Geoffrey H. Hartman, Criticism in the Wilderness: The Study of Literature Today, →ISBN, page 84:
    It does not win its game with anyone: not with the artists who resent it; nor with social thinkers who look down on its headgame of words, sounds, and minute particulars; nor with activists who believe in proving arguments and converting minds by intellectual or other means.

Verb

headgame (third-person singular simple present headgames, present participle headgaming, simple past and past participle headgamed)

Alternative form of head-game
- 1988, David Thomson, Warren Beatty and Desert Eyes: a life and a story, →ISBN, page 189:
  He'll headgame you till you're as stuck as he is,

Anagrams

game-head