patty-cake

American  

[pat-i-keyk] / ˈpæt ɪˌkeɪk /

noun

1. pat-a-cake.

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Example Sentences

“They call it ‘Gestapo tactics,’ but when Homeland Security comes knocking on your door, they’re not coming to play patty-cake,” said Dailey, a cattleman with a farm outside the city.

From The Wall Street Journal

The group has been known to break out into hopscotch, Hula-Hoop, line dancing, jump rope and patty-cake, among other games.

From Los Angeles Times

As Times columnist Mark Z. Barabak put it: “The calculus is plain. Schiff is hoping to clinch the Senate seat in the March 5 primary by lifting his weakest possible opponent, Garvey, into a November runoff. Brazen? Sure. Cynical or anti-democratic, as some critics claim? Not a bit. ... This is politics, after all. Not patty-cake.”

From Los Angeles Times

“If the theater must bring us only what we can immediately apprehend or comfortably relate to,” Albee responded in one of cultural journalism’s best mic drops, “let us stop going to the theater entirely. Let us play patty-cake with one another or sit in our rooms and contemplate our paunchy middles.”

From New York Times

In front of these drawings at the Met, I fell in love with David again: with his intensity and his frigidity; with how, in his shadow, today’s “political” art looks as benign as patty-cake.

From New York Times