fast and loose

adverb

1

: in a reckless or irresponsible manner

… played fast and loose with the public purse strings.

—Paul Stuewe

2

: in a craftily deceitful way

… manipulated evidence … and played fast and loose with the truth.

—C. V. Woodward

Examples of fast and loose in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Crisping the perfect pizza crust on a baking steel, searing steaks on a grill, draining a pot of scalding pasta water, or pulling a hot potato from an oven—none of these are the time or place to play it fast and loose. — Adam Campbell-Schmitt, Bon Appetit Magazine, 17 June 2026

Building on a concept devised by the director and producer Pierre-Henri Léon, Santiago Otheguy’s script plays fast and loose with Bizet’s opera and the Prosper Mérimée novella that inspired it — to the point of inventing an entirely new protagonist. — Guy Lodge, Variety, 31 May 2026

Musk’s attorneys brought him on to argue that OpenAI had played fast and loose with the technology, but Judge Gonzalez Rogers ruled that talk of existential risk was off-limits. — Gideon Lewis-Kraus, New Yorker, 20 May 2026

For starters, someone might be fast and loose with the truth. — Georgia Nicols, Denver Post, 8 Jan. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1557, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for fast and loose

• disabuse
• introduce
• reproduce
• abstruse
• abuse
• adduce
• atreus
• caboose
• cayuse
• conduce
• deduce
• diffuse