to play the victim card
1
8.5
- idiom
- Offensive
:
hacerse la víctima
- She always seems to play the victim card whenever things don't go her way, hoping for sympathy from others.
I've, I've never known anybody who was a true victim who played the victim card.
- I've, I've never known anybody who was a true victim who played the victim card.
Examples
-
Quit playing the victim card.
Blog text (3) -
Still trying desperately to play the victim card, are you?
Blog text (22) -
You guys love to play the victim card, don't you?
-
He tried to play the victim card during the meeting to avoid taking responsibility for his mistakes.
-
If you keep playing the victim card, you'll never learn to address your own issues.
Synonyms
Act like a person who complains a lot to get sympathy
Antonyms
How Manipulative
- Offensive
1
8.5
- Specialized
Surface Forms
Morphology
The core idea of pretending to be a victim is reasonably recoverable from 'play' (act/pretend) + 'victim' (someone who suffers), so a learner who knows those words could guess the general intent. However, the addition of 'card' is a metaphorical extension ('play the X card' = use something as a tactical argument), which is not fully compositional and requires familiarity with the idiomatic card-as-tactic pattern; therefore the phrase is only partially predictable.
Etymology
Play the victim card paints a picture from a card game: you play a special card called the victim as a trick to win. So, when someone 'plays the victim card', they pretend to be a victim to 'gain sympathy' or 'avoid blame'.