Word.ws English Dictionary

play the devil with

play the devil with verb: to cause great trouble or distress to.

Verb

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

  1. (colloquial, idiomatic) To cause great trouble or distress to.
    • There's a silly young fool; but perhaps it's not entirely his fault. The last six months of the war played the devil with many an unformed character.1937, Rupert Penny, The Talkative Policeman, page 166

Synonyms of play the devil with

Forms of play the devil with

third-person singular presentplays the devil with
present participleplaying the devil with
past participleplayed the devil with
pastplayed the devil with

Questions about play the devil with

What does play the devil with mean?
Play the devil with means to cause great trouble or distress to.
What part of speech is play the devil with?
Play the devil with is a verb.
What is the past tense of play the devil with?
The past tense of play the devil with is played the devil with.

Words near play the devil with in the dictionary

  1. play the ball, not the man
  2. play the board
  3. play the cat and banjo with
  4. play the clitar
  5. play the deuce with
  6. play the devil with
  7. play the dickens with
  8. play the field
  9. play the fool
  10. play the game
  11. play the gender card

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: play the devil with (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.

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