Word.ws English Dictionary

played hardball

played hardball is the simple past and past participle of play hardball.

Meaning of play hardball

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To use every means possible to achieve a goal, especially in disregarding the harm caused.
    • He was more than willing to extend the terms of the loan, but his boss decided to play hardball and demanded a balloon payment.
  2. (idiomatic, informal) To act rough and ruthless, especially in business or politics.
    • So you wanna play hardball?

Questions about played hardball

What is played hardball the simple past and past participle of?
Played hardball is the simple past and past participle of play hardball.

Words near played hardball in the dictionary

  1. played for time
  2. played full
  3. played games
  4. played God
  5. played gooseberry
  6. played hardball
  7. played havoc
  8. played hell with
  9. played hob with
  10. played hooky
  11. played host to

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: played hardball (page history and authors); play hardball (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: “played hardball.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/played_hardball. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.