Word.ws English Dictionary

clowning around

clowning around is the present participle and gerund of clown around.

Meaning of clown around

Verb

clown around (third-person singular simple present clowns around, present participle clowning around, simple past and past participle clowned around)

  1. To have fun in an irresponsible manner.
    • While in Matliary, where Kafka stayed to recover from his tuberculosis he often confided in Robert Klopstock, one of his favorite fellow patients. Klopstock must have been deeply impressed to find that one could have long and serious discussions about Zionism, Christianity, Dostoevsky, and love to...2017 May 16, Jerry Stuger, “Kafka and Autism. The Undisclosed Logic Behind Kafka’s Work”, in Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, volume 47, →DOI, pages 2336–2347

Questions about clowning around

What is clowning around the present participle and gerund of?
Clowning around is the present participle and gerund of clown around.

Words near clowning around in the dictionary

  1. clownies
  2. clowniest
  3. clowniness
  4. clowning
  5. clowning about
  6. clowning around
  7. clowning on
  8. clowningly
  9. clownings
  10. clownish
  11. clownishly

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: clowning around (page history and authors); clown around (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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