💧 Flood protection 🎭 Pretending weakness

sandbagging

1 7.9

Pretending to be worse in a game to win later

noun
/ˈsændˌbæɡɪŋ/

Informal

: fingir incompetencia

You know, like cool, but if it's my truth, I can't not say it because then you're sandbagging and sandbagging is also, you see where I'm going.

Examples

However, we have this risk of Trump possibly sandbagging the stimulus deal.
Is NVIDIA ruining your performance by sandbagging their drivers?
In competitive gaming, some players use sandbagging to trick their opponents into underestimating their skills.
He was accused of sandbagging during the tournament by pretending to play poorly to gain an advantage later.
The athlete's strategy of sandbagging helped her win the championship by hiding her true capabilities.

Synonyms

weaponized incompetence

vssandbagging

Neologism

9.7

Someone acts like they cannot do a task to avoid doing it

aim to seem weaker now in order to gain an advantage later

How Deceptive

fraud

577 4.0

cheating

1 2.0

sandbagging

Informal

1 7.9

pretending

1 4.1

Surface Forms

sandbagging singular

sandbaggings plural

Morphology

sandbagging = sandbag (opaque) = sand + bag + ing

The figurative sense 'pretend to be less skilled' is idiomatic and not derivable by straightforward composition from 'sand' + 'bag'.

Etymology

The word sandbagging is used when someone 'pretends' to be weaker or worse than they are so they can surprise others later, and a helpful image is hiding a heavy sand bag until the right moment. That's why sandbagging means holding back your real skill on purpose to gain an advantage.