play Old Harry
English
Verb
- (idiomatic) To play the devil; to make mischief.
- Blenkiron and I have been moving in the best circles as skilled American engineers who are going to play Old Harry with the British on the Tigris. — John Buchan, "Greenmantle", 1916.
- I distinguish five more general classes: but I am far from equally happy about all of them. They are, however, quite enough to play Old Harry with two fetishes which I admit to an inclination to play Old Harry with, viz. (1) the true/false fetish, (2) the value/fact fetish. J. L. Austin, How to do things with words, Oxford 1962.
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.