play silly buggers
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Who's playing silly buggers? "
Come on, stop playing silly buggers, you're putting the wind right up me.’
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “play silly buggers” mean?
To fool around or behave foolishly Literally: to play foolish bugs
Is “play silly buggers” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.