mischief

• But I at length consented to accompany them, after learning that all the mischief was already done that could be feared, and that the gallant lover desired to marry the lady as the only atonement he could make for the loss of her reputation. —  Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman
• His actions excited the deepest curiosity of Jimmy, who, pulling Ned's head close down to his own lips, asked softly Now, what in the mischief is the feller doin' when he stoops low like that? —  Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay The Disappearing Fleet
• Infantry and cavalry, commissaries and quartermasters, doctors and sutlers, the denizens of Gate City well knew as attachments of the army, but what the mischief was an Engineer? —  A Wounded Name
• Oh, no, we shall not take a pilot, who might possibly go back to Havana and set people wondering what the mischief was our object in slipping in behind Esquivel del Norte cay CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE RESCUE With all due observance of the courtesies of the sea the graceful, white-hulled Thetis dipped a farewell salute to the Spanish warships in Havana harbour as she next morning swept past them, outward bound, shortly after nine o'clock in the morning of a glorious April day. —  The Cruise of the Thetis A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection
• But at the bottom of the mischief was the attempt of the missionaries and officials at home to act as though a handful of savages--not then more, I believe, than 65,000 in all, and rapidly dwindling in numbers--could be allowed to keep a fertile and healthy Archipelago larger than Great Britain. —  The Long White Cloud

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the Same Context