Word.ws English Dictionary

going about

going about is the present participle and gerund of go about.

Meaning of go about

Verb

go about (third-person singular simple present goes about, present participle going about, simple past went about, past participle gone about)

  1. (transitive) To busy oneself with.
    • The workers went about their business as Zelensky looked around. One man at the wheel of a forklift seemed annoyed when the presidential entourage got in his way, and the machine beeped loudly as we tried to maneuver around him.December 7 2022, Simon Shuster, “2022 Person of the Year: Volodymyr Zelensky”, in Time, archived from the original on 04 Jan 2023
  2. (intransitive) To tackle (a problem or task).
    • A marvellous witty fellow, I assure you; but I will go about with him.1598–1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “Much Adoe about Nothing”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  3. (intransitive) To circulate (in).
    Synonyms:
    shrithe
  4. (intransitive) To change from one tack to another. See :Wikipedia:Tack (maneuver).
    • [I]t was commonly said that two masts, a bowsprit and a swivel gun would have transformed our dwelling into a line-of-battle ship; indeed, so seaman-like was our architect, that we feared when once we had taken possession of our new house, we might be disturbed during the night by an order being...1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 112

Questions about going about

What is going about the present participle and gerund of?
Going about is the present participle and gerund of go about.

Words near going about in the dictionary

  1. going
  2. going a cropper
  3. going a long way
  4. going a mucker
  5. going a raker
  6. going about
  7. going about one's business
  8. going about one's day
  9. going about to
  10. going abroad
  11. going after

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: going about (page history and authors); go about (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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Cite this entry: “going about.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/going_about. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.