Hi, guys. In one book of Geoge Orwell, he was blamed by the Head teacher's wife for wasting time, and she said'Do you think it's quite playing the game by your mother and father to go on idling your time away, week after week, month after month?' I don't know what does 'playing the game by your mother and fatehr'. Could anyone tell me, please? Thank you!

Question

Answer

'Playing the game' means following the rules or behaving appropriately. 'Quite' just means really.

'By your mother and father' just means towards or regarding.

You could re-write it as:

Do you think you are behaving responsibly towards your mother and father?

Do you think it is fair to your mother and father to go on idling ...?

Answer

In context of wasting time, I think she is saying the boy is fooling his parents. who think he is being productive.  Instead, he is wasting time.

Answer

Pretty colloquial. ‘Quite’ is typical of the period/register and is just an interjection, more or less. ‘Playing the game’ means ‘doing right’, but I wouldn’t have been able to figure that out without knowing the context.

Matt

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