headgame

plural headgames

1. Alternative form of head game.
   1. An attempt to psychologically manipulate

      And that whole long story about Zach — that was just some kind of headgame?"

      1999 -, Alex Matthews, Wanton's Web, →ISBN, page 245

      3 more examples

      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.

      1990, Giovanni Dotoli, Giovanni Bonanno, Canada ieri e oggi 2

      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.

      2013, Iris Smyles, Iris Has Free Time, →ISBN, page 83

      It struck Jill that he was serious, that maybe this wasn't some sort of rich-guy headgame.

      2016, Scotty Weeks, A Familiar Face: And other stories, →ISBN

   2. A mental pursuit

      Bloch's utopia is not More's headgame. It is real.

      2003, Science-fiction Studies - Volume 30, Issue 2, page 301

      1 more example

      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.

      2007, Geoffrey H. Hartman, Criticism in the Wilderness: The Study of Literature Today, →ISBN, page 84

present singular third person headgames · participle present headgaming · participle past headgamed · past headgamed

1. alternativeAlternative form of head-game.

   He'll headgame you till you're as stuck as he is,

   1988, David Thomson, Warren Beatty and Desert Eyes: a life and a story, →ISBN, page 189