mess around
UK also mess about— phrasal verb with mess uk/mes/us/mes/verb
(SPEND TIME)
C1 informal to spend time doing various things that are not important, without any particular purpose or plan:
They spend their weekends messing around on their boat.
My brother likes messing around with computers.
He spent the day with friends, just messing about.
More examples
- He spends all day messing around with the dogs instead of working.
- Stop messing around watching the telly, and come and help me.
- We spent the week messing around in the cottage.
- I need to stop messing around and make some decisions.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Avoiding action
- avoid
- avoid sth like the plague idiom
- avoidance
- bottle
- bottle out
- flinch
- flinch from sth/doing sth
- fudge
- get out of sth
- get-out clause
- insure
- shrink
- sit on your arse idiom
- skip out on sb/sth
- stand around
- stand by
- stand round
- steer
- welch
- welsh
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(ACT STUPIDLY)
to behave in a stupid or annoying way:
Stop messing around and listen to me!
More examples
- Immediately after she'd gone, the boys started to mess around.
- The children were driving me mad by messing around all the time.
- Stop messing around - I'm trying to be serious.
- He spent all his time at school just messing around.
Thesaurus: synonyms and related words
Behaving in a silly way
- act/play the goat idiom
- be asking for it/trouble idiom
- be playing at sth idiom
- clown
- cut up
- faff
- fart
- goat
- goof
- goof around
- horse around
- kid
- mess
- monkey
- monkey around
- muck
- muck sb/sth about/around
- piss (sb) about/around
- play around
- spectacle
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