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

No one wants fast and loose operators around the important matter of money. — Kamal Ahmed, Fortune, 3 July 2026

Husband-and-wife directors Glenn Leyburn and Lisa Barros D’Sa play a little fast and loose with the truth (apparently the team’s hard-partying scenes are pure fiction). — Jon O'Brien, Vulture, 26 June 2026

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

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