mischief

noun

1. (uncountable)Conduct that playfully causes petty annoyance.

   “Drink led to mischief.”

2. (countable)A playfully annoying action.

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

3. (collective, countable, uncountable)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.”

   “A group of rats is not a herd or a gaggle, but a pack or a mischief of rats. Rats in general are omnivorous, meaning they will eat almost anything.”

4. (archaic, uncountable)Harm or injury:

   “She had mischief in her heart.”

   “Sooner or later he'll succeed in doing some serious mischief.”

   “Was I the Cauſe of Miſchief, or the Man / Whoſe lawlesſ Luſt the bloody War began?”

   “I have been tired in history with the perpetual folly of those states, who call in foreigners to assist them against a common enemy: but the mischief was, these allies would never be brought to allow, that the common enemy was quite subdued. And they had reason; for it proved at last, that one part of the common enemy was those who called them in, and so the allies became at length the masters.”

   “Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief.”

5. (archaic, countable)Harm or injury:

   “It may end in her doing a great mischief to herself—and perhaps to others too.”

   “[R]eligion / Hides many mischiefs from suspicion.”

   “I will heape mischiefes vpon them, I will spend mine arrowes vpon them.”

6. (countable, uncountable)A criminal offence defined in various ways in various jurisdictions, sometimes including causing damage to another's property.
7. (archaic, countable)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.”

   “Epimetheus was scatter-brained and a mischief to men for having taken the woman [Pandora] that Zeus had formed.”

8. (countable, euphemistic, uncountable)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?”

9. (Australia, countable, uncountable)Casual and/or flirtatious sexual acts.

verb

1. (obsolete, transitive)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."”

2. (obsolete, transitive)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.”