play with fire

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

1. (idiomatic) To put oneself in a precarious situation with a high risk of getting harmed, particularly emotionally or financially.

   I'm telling you, if you sign that paper, you're playing with fire.

   Play with fire and you get burned.

   • 2013, Al Gore, The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change‎, New York: Random House, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, pages 310–311:

     Long predicted by climate models, stratospheric cooling is a result of the Earth’s atmosphere attempting to maintain its energy "balance." Much more work will need to be performed before this troubling surprise is fully understood, but it already illustrates the recklessness of this "planetary experiment" that humanity has under way. We are not only playing with fire, but ice as well. As Robert Frost wrote, "Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice." Either one, he added, "would suffice."

   • 2022 July 29, Xi Jinping, quotee, “Xi speaks with Biden over phone”, in huaxia, editor, Xinhua News Agency‎, archived from the original on 28 July 2022:

     The position of the Chinese government and people on the Taiwan question is consistent, and resolutely safeguarding China's national sovereignty and territorial integrity is the firm will of the more than 1.4 billion Chinese people, he said.
     The will of the people cannot be defied and those who play with fire will perish by it, he said, adding that it is hoped that the United States will be clear-eyed about this.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:play with fire.

• ask for it
• ask for trouble