play hob with

play hob with verb: mess with, cause trouble for.

Verb

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

(UK, dated, idiomatic, rustic US) mess with, cause trouble for
- They say it's playing hob with the fellers in these here parts.1838 June 2, Mirror, N.Y, 387/1
- The revolutionists who are playing hob with our generation are really masters of the obsolete.1940, D.A. Lord, Our Lady in the Modern World, iii. 141
Synonyms:

mess with, play the devil

play hob with meaning in Bengali

play hob with in Bengali

বিড়ম্বনা করা

Synonyms of play hob with

mess with
play the devil

Forms of play hob with

third-person singular present	plays hob with
present participle	playing hob with
past participle	played hob with
past	played hob with

Origin of play hob with

From Middle English Hob (a diminutive of Robin, from Old French [Term?], a diminutive of Robert) in its connection with Robin Goodfellow and (subsequently) the devil. Compare hobgoblin.

Questions about play hob with

What does play hob with mean?: Play hob with means mess with, cause trouble for.
What is play hob with in Bengali?: Play hob with in Bengali is বিড়ম্বনা করা. See Play hob with meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is play hob with?: Play hob with is a verb.
What is the past tense of play hob with?: The past tense of play hob with is played hob with.

Words near play hob with in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: play hob with (page history and authors); play hob with (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-play hob with.ogg.

Cite this entry: “play hob with.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/play_hob_with. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.