Word.ws English Dictionary

plays hardball

plays hardball is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 plays hardball

What is plays hardball the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Plays hardball is the third-person singular simple present indicative of play hardball.

Words near plays hardball in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: plays 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: “plays hardball.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/plays_hardball. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.