Word.ws English Dictionary

playing silly buggers

playing silly buggers is the present participle and gerund of play silly buggers.

Meaning of play silly buggers

Verb

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

  1. (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK, idiomatic) To act in a stupid or reckless manner.
    • "Look," he said, "it's just fate playing silly buggers with you. With me. With us. It's a complete coincidence."1982, Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything, page 95

Questions about playing silly buggers

What is playing silly buggers the present participle and gerund of?
Playing silly buggers is the present participle and gerund of play silly buggers.

Words near playing silly buggers in the dictionary

  1. playing piece
  2. playing politics
  3. playing possum
  4. playing pussy
  5. playing second fiddle
  6. playing silly buggers
  7. playing small
  8. playing someone at their own game
  9. playing someone like a bass fiddle
  10. playing someone like a fiddle
  11. playing someone like a violin

Source and license

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