Word.ws English Dictionary

play up Old Gooseberry

play up Old Gooseberry is the alternative form of play Old Gooseberry.

Meaning of play Old Gooseberry

Verb

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

  1. (UK, archaic, idiomatic) To suddenly put a stop to a disturbance by force or threats.
  2. (UK, archaic, idiomatic) To play the devil; to make mischief.
    • I'll play old Gooseberry with the office, and make you glad to buy me out at a good high figure, if you try any of your tricks with me.1843–44, Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit
    Synonyms:
    play Old Harry

Forms of play up Old Gooseberry

third-person singular presentplays up Old Gooseberry
present participleplaying up Old Gooseberry
past participleplayed up Old Gooseberry
pastplayed up Old Gooseberry

Questions about play up Old Gooseberry

What is play up Old Gooseberry the alternative form of?
Play up Old Gooseberry is the alternative form of play Old Gooseberry.

Words near play up Old Gooseberry in the dictionary

  1. play to win
  2. play tonsil hockey
  3. play tricks
  4. play truant
  5. play up
  6. play up Old Gooseberry
  7. play up to
  8. play upon
  9. play upon words
  10. play well with others
  11. play with

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: play up Old Gooseberry (page history and authors); play Old Gooseberry (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 up Old Gooseberry.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/play_up_old_gooseberry. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.