play doctor

English

Noun

play doctor (plural play doctors)

1. A professional who is called in to revise a play written by someone else.
   • 1912 July 19, The Evening Telegram, Elyria, Ohio:

     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.

Verb

play doctor (third-person singular simple present plays doctor, present participle playing doctor, simple past and past participle played doctor)

1. To pretend to be doctor and patient as a form of child play.
2. (sexuality, usually of minors) To explore or sexually engage with another person's private parts, particularly in the context of roleplay of a medical nature.
   • 1931 October, R. L. Whitely, “Interviewing the Problem Boy”, in E. George Payne, editor, The Journal of Educational Sociology‎^[1], volume V, number 2, Albany, page 99:

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

   • 1988, Lynn Leight, Raising Sexually Healthy Children‎^[2], New York: Avon Books, published 1990, →ISBN, page 226:

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

Translations

to engage in sexual role-play of a medical nature

• Finnish: leikkiä lääkäriä
• French: jouer au docteur (fr)
• German: Doktorspiele spielen
• Polish: bawić się w doktora impf

References

• “play-doctor, n.” under “play, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.