play tricks

1. 1.

   deceive somebody

   “We tricked the teacher into thinking that class would be cancelled next week”

   Synonymsflim-flamplay a joke ontrickfobfoxpull a fast one onplay a trick on

   Broaderdeceive

   Narrowersnooker

Questions about play tricks

What does play tricks mean?

play tricks means "deceive somebody".

What is another word for play tricks?

Close synonyms include flim-flam, play a joke on, trick, fob, fox. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is play tricks a common word?

play tricks is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.