Other forms: possums
A possum is a tree-dwelling marsupial that pretends to be dead when caught. Play possum, a possum in the roof, spot a possum.
Playing possum means feigning sleep or death, and the animal does not choose it, since the collapse is an involuntary reaction to terror. In Australia the word means a different animal entirely from the American opossum.
1nounpossumA tree-dwelling marsupial that pretends to be dead when caught.
“A possum hung by its tail from the branch outside our window.”
possum is an animal.
A shortening of opossum, from a Virginia Algonquian word.
an unknown language
opossum
English, today
possum
From an unknown language opossum. Derived from opossum by apheresis.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA