playact vs ham it up

playact and ham it up both are verbs.

Word	Noun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb
playact	No	No	Yes	No
ham it up	No	No	Yes	No

As verbs, ham it up is a hyponym of playact; that is, ham it up is a word with a more specific, narrower meaning than playact:

Other hyponyms of playact include stooge, mime, pantomime, ham, overact, overplay, underact, underplay.

playact (verb)	ham it up (verb)
perform on a stage or theater	exaggerate one's acting