mischief

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   Conduct that playfully causes petty annoyance.

   Drink led to mischief.

2. 2
   noun

   A playfully annoying action.

   John's mischief, tying his shoelaces together, irked George at first.

3. 3
   noun

   A group or a pack of rats.

   Kirac, the leader of the rats under his charge, speaks to the major through his telepathic abilities that manifested after the alien virus infected him and his mischief of rats.

4. 4
   noun

   Harm or injury:

   She had mischief in her heart.

5. 5
   noun

   A cause or agent of annoyance, harm or injury, especially a person who causes mischief.

   To die like a man of honour, Sir Hargrave, you must have lived like one. You should be sure of your cause. But these pistols are too ready a mischief. Were I to meet you in your own way, Sir Hargrave, I should not expect, that a man so enraged would fire his over my head, as I should be willing to do mine over his. Life I would not put upon the perhaps involuntary twitch of a finger.

6. 6
   noun

   The Devil; used as an expletive.

   What the mischief are you? and how the mischief did you get here, and where in thunder did you come from?

7. 7
   verb

   To do a mischief to; to harm.

   "Not now, Smee," Hook said darkly. "He is only one, and I want to mischief all the seven. Scatter and look for them."

8. 8
   verb

   To slander.

   And so it hath been divers times; Men mischiefing the Jews to excuse their own Wickedness: as to instance one Precedent in the time of a certain King of Portugal.

Etymology

From Middle English myschef, meschef, meschief, mischef, from Old French meschief, from meschever (“to bring to grief”), from mes- (“badly”) + chever (“happen; come to a head”), from Vulgar Latin *capare, from Latin caput (“head”).