play merry havoc with in English

Forms: plays merry havoc with [present, singular, third-person], playing merry havoc with [participle, present], played merry havoc with [participle, past], played merry havoc with [past] [Show additional information ▼] [Hide additional information ▲]

Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} play merry havoc with (third-person singular simple present plays merry havoc with, present participle playing merry havoc with, simple past and past participle played merry havoc with)

Inflected forms

[Show JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▼] [Hide JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▲]

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "plays merry havoc with",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "playing merry havoc with",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "played merry havoc with",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "played merry havoc with",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "play merry havoc with (third-person singular simple present plays merry havoc with, present participle playing merry havoc with, simple past and past participle played merry havoc with)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Synonym of play the devil with."
      ],
      "id": "en-play_merry_havoc_with-en-verb-lZi5kDMz",
      "links": [
        [
          "play the devil with",
          "play the devil with#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) Synonym of play the devil with."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "tags": [
            "synonym",
            "synonym-of"
          ],
          "word": "play the devil with"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "play merry havoc with"
}

[Show JSON for raw wiktextract data ▼] [Hide JSON for raw wiktextract data ▲]

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "plays merry havoc with",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "playing merry havoc with",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "played merry havoc with",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "played merry havoc with",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "play merry havoc with (third-person singular simple present plays merry havoc with, present participle playing merry havoc with, simple past and past participle played merry havoc with)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English verbs",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Synonym of play the devil with."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "play the devil with",
          "play the devil with#English"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) Synonym of play the devil with."
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "tags": [
            "synonym",
            "synonym-of"
          ],
          "word": "play the devil with"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "play merry havoc with"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-03-25 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-03-03 using wiktextract (05c257f and 9d9a410). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.

"play merry havoc with" meaning in English

Verb

Inflected forms