Helen Nguyen
2020-12-20 02:12
Play the giddy goat British informal verb phrase
You can use "act" instead of "play" without changing the meaning.
Sam usually plays the giddy goat, so difficult people don't like him much.
Comedians normally play the giddy goat to make audiences laugh.
Stop acting the giddy goat, you make me feel uncomfortable.
Used when someone is acting silly or stupid in order to avoid doing something or completing a task
The verb "play" should be conjugated according its tense
The phrase 'play the giddy goat' (or "act the giddy goat') wasn't made at the beginning but was built up from individual earlier phrases. 'Giddy' has been used to mean foolish or stupid since the first millennium and has been applied as an adjective to all sorts of creatures. Prominent amongst these was the ox and there are several citations of 'play (or act) the giddy ox' which pre-date the 'giddy goat' variant; for example, the British comic Ally Sloper's Half-Holiday used the phrase in a March 1892 edition:
"Fanny Robinson was flighty; she played the giddy ox - I mean, heifer."
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