Choose the correct meaning of idiom: Play gooseberry

Correct — B. To play gooseberry is a British informal idiom: you are the third person keeping company with two people, especially a couple, who want to be alone together.

Option (b) carries both halves of it: a third person, and one the couple do not want → option (b).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Act as mediator in a dispute — A mediator is wanted: both sides accept the go-between to settle a dispute. The gooseberry is the reverse, a presence the couple would rather do without.
• (c)
  Tell jokes badly — Telling jokes badly is about humour. The idiom is about an extra person where two want privacy, whatever that person says or does.
• (d)
  Refuse commitment — Refusing commitment describes someone avoiding a relationship. The gooseberry is not in the relationship at all: they are the outsider with the couple.

An idiom's meaning cannot be built from its words. Nothing about the fruit tells you the sense, so it has to be known.

Dictionaries mark play gooseberry as British and informal. It pictures a trio: a couple who want privacy and one extra person who, knowingly or not, stops them having it.

The idiom is about the third person's position, not their intentions or their behaviour.

Key facts

• Play gooseberry (British, informal): be an unwanted third person with a couple who want to be alone.
• A third wheel is the same unwanted third person.
• A mediator is a go-between both sides accept in order to settle a dispute.

Common traps

• Trying to decode the fruit. Nothing in gooseberry points to a third person, so the literal reading leads nowhere.
• Choosing Act as mediator because the idiom involves a third party with two people. A mediator is wanted by both sides, and the gooseberry is not.

No directly related past PYQ was found.