play doctor

plural play doctors

1. A professional who is called in to revise a play written by someone else.

   1 more example

   If Shakespeare lived to-day he would have waited four years to have his first comedy read and accepted—after which it would have been re-written by the stage carpenter and the leading lady and put on with interpolated songs and a costume chorus with a play doctor in the rear of the theater keeping track of the laughs with a hand comptometer.

   1912 July 19, The Evening Telegram, Elyria, Ohio

present singular third person plays doctor · participle present playing doctor · participle past played doctor · past played doctor

1. To pretend to be doctor and patient as a form of child play.
2. usuallylifestyleTo explore or sexually engage with another person's private parts, particularly in the context of roleplay of a medical nature.

   […] Jimmie volunteered, […] "How can you have kids if you don't play doctor?"

   1931 October, R. L. Whitely, “Interviewing the Problem Boy”, in E. George Payne, editor, The Journal of Educational Sociology, volume V, number 2, Albany, page 99

   1 more example

   By the time they are six, they may play doctor and take one another's rectal temperature or place objects into their orifices, […]

   1988, Lynn Leight, Raising Sexually Healthy Children, New York: Avon Books, published 1990, →ISBN, page 226