Word.ws English Dictionary

plays Old Harry

plays Old Harry is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 plays Old Harry

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

Words near plays Old Harry in the dictionary

  1. plays number two
  2. plays of color
  3. plays of words
  4. plays off
  5. plays Old Gooseberry
  6. plays Old Harry
  7. plays Old Harry with
  8. plays on
  9. plays on someone's heartstrings
  10. plays on words
  11. plays one against another

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: plays 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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “plays Old Harry.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/plays_old_harry. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.