Word.ws English Dictionary

fiddle around

fiddle around verb: to toy or play (with something) in an idle, fidgety, aimless or unstructured way; to mess around (with); to muck around (with).

Verb

fiddle around (third-person singular simple present fiddles around, present participle fiddling around, simple past and past participle fiddled around)

  1. (intransitive, transitive) To toy or play (with something) in an idle, fidgety, aimless or unstructured way; to mess around (with); to muck around (with).
    • Stop fiddling around with those matches before you set the place on fire.
  2. (intransitive, transitive) To tinker (with): to make small adjustments or improvements (to something), especially in an experimental or unskilled manner.
    • I've been fiddling around all morning, trying to get this old lawnmower to work.

Forms of fiddle around

third-person singular presentfiddles around
present participlefiddling around
past participlefiddled around
pastfiddled around

Questions about fiddle around

What does fiddle around mean?
Fiddle around means to toy or play (with something) in an idle, fidgety, aimless or unstructured way; to mess around (with); to muck around (with).
What part of speech is fiddle around?
Fiddle around is a verb.
What is the past tense of fiddle around?
The past tense of fiddle around is fiddled around.

Words near fiddle around in the dictionary

  1. fiddies
  2. fidding
  3. fiddlah
  4. fiddle
  5. fiddle about
  6. fiddle around
  7. fiddle away
  8. fiddle beetle
  9. fiddle beetles
  10. fiddle block
  11. fiddle blocks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fiddle 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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “fiddle around.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fiddle_around. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.