Name: Learn the English Phrases "to play dumb" and "dumb luck"
Uploaded: 2026-02-19T21:01:20.000Z
Duration: 4 min 1 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

In this English lesson, I wanted to help you learn the English phrase to play dumb.

In English, when you play dumb, it means you pretend you don't know something when you actually do.

The superlative

The most common example would be when someone does something they're not supposed to,

and then when asked about it, they might play dumb.

If you watch a TV show and the cops arrest the criminal,

the criminal might play dumb and say, "I don't know what you're talking about.

As a teacher, sometimes I'll catch students doing something,

and then when I ask them what they were doing, they play dumb.

They pretend that they didn't do what I saw them do.

The other phrase I wanted to teach you today is dumb luck.

Dumb luck simply means that something happens to you that's good,

and it's not because of anything that you've done to make it happen.

So a great example of this would be you suddenly - let me see. I'm trying to think.

A good example of dumb luck would be you're driving along and you lose control of car in the snow,

But it has nothing to do with you steering properly or anything.

You didn't go in the ditch because of dumb luck.

So to review, to play dumb means to pretend you don't know something when you actually do,

usually when someone's accusing you of doing something wrong.

And dumb luck simply means to be extremely lucky.

And you had no... not because of anything that you did.

Sorry, I'm a little distracted with all the traffic this morning.

I'm doing this during morning rush hour in my town.

But, hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video.

"Yes, my son likes to use the expression, 'oh, shoot' from time to time. Thank you."

And my response is it's better than the alternative, which is kind of a minor, vulgar word.

And then Tammy says, "You can say that again."

Let me get you guys a little further away so you can see a bit more.

You can see behind me that, well, there's a school bus over there because kids are getting picked up for school.

As you know, I teach in the afternoon now.

So I'm here in the morning shooting my video.

Yes, I did leave my tripod all by itself over there on the sidewalk.

There I am in the window shooting my video on a nice quiet morning here in town.

One, in spite of the fact that I love winter,

I do find it way easier to make videos when the weather's a bit warmer.

You can see that I'm just wearing a jacket right now.

You can see I'm just wearing a light jacket right now.

You can see that people are out and about, just wearing a ball cap instead of a winter hat.

There's even just people standing, checking their phones.

Like even just last week or a week and a half ago, that would not have been happening.

It was far too cold for people to be outside and being somewhat leisure or to be moving at a slower pace.

So in spite of the fact that I love winter, I must admit it is much nicer being out here today.

I am putting my hand in my pocket occasionally though, just to warm it up a little bit.

But yeah, this is just much nicer than it was.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this little English lesson and I'll see you next week with another one.