Word.ws English Dictionary

playing Old Harry

playing Old Harry is the present participle and gerund of play Old Harry.

Meaning of play Old Harry

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To play the devil; to make mischief.
    • By his accent and innocent style I detected he was not a colonial, so I got him to relate his history. He was an Englishman by birth, but had been to America, Spain, New Zealand, Tasmania, &c.; by his own make out had ever been a man of note, and had played Old Harry everywhere.1901, Miles Franklin, “’Possum Gully Left Behind. Hurrah! Hurrah!”, in My Brilliant Career, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, page 60

Questions about playing Old Harry

What is playing Old Harry the present participle and gerund of?
Playing Old Harry is the present participle and gerund of play Old Harry.

Words near playing Old Harry in the dictionary

  1. playing nice
  2. playing Nostradamus
  3. playing number two
  4. playing off
  5. playing Old Gooseberry
  6. playing Old Harry
  7. playing Old Harry with
  8. playing on
  9. playing on someone's heartstrings
  10. playing one against another
  11. playing one's cards right

Source and license

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