play the devil with

verb

play the devil with

verb

1

Colloquial, Idiomatic To cause great trouble or distress to.

There's a silly young fool; but perhaps it's not entirely his fault. The last six months of the war played the devil with many an unformed character.1937, Rupert Penny, The Talkative Policeman, page 166:

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.