play up Old Gooseberry

English

Verb

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

  1. Alternative form of play Old Gooseberry
    • 1819 March 1, Moore, Thomas, Tom Crib's Memorial to Congress‎, page 22:
      Sandy's the boy, if once to it they fall, / That will play up old gooseberry soon with them all.

References
  • [Francis Grose] (1788), “Play up Old Gooseberry”, in A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 2nd edition, London: […] S. Hooper, […], →OCLC.
  • Farmer, John Stephen (1893) Slang and Its Analogues‎, volume 3, page 183
  • Eric Partridge, The Routledge Dictionary of Historical Slang. Routledge, 1973. →ISBN.
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