mess about

mess about verb: to misbehave.

Verb

mess about (third-person singular simple present messes about, present participle messing about, simple past and past participle messed about)

(intransitive) To misbehave
- Kids! Stop messing about and do your work!
(intransitive) To be in a casual non-committal relationship
- Anna and I are just messing about; this isn't going to last.
(transitive) To play with; to toy with; to waste the time of (a person).
- Stop messing me about and give me a straight answer!
Synonyms:

mess around

play about, play around, potter about: കുരുത്തക്കേടു കാട്ടുക, ശല്യം ചെയ്യുന്ന തരത്തിൽ പെരുമാറുക, അന്യായമായ രീതിയിൽ പെരുമാറുക, നിസ്സാരകാര്യങ്ങളിൽ ഉൾപ്പെടുക, അലസമായി ചുറ്റിത്തിരിയുക, ബാലിശമായി പെരുമാറുക

third-person singular present	messes about
present participle	messing about
past participle	messed about
past	messed about

What does mess about mean?: Mess about means to misbehave.
What is mess about in Malayalam?: Mess about in Malayalam is കുരുത്തക്കേടു കാട്ടുക, ശല്യം ചെയ്യുന്ന തരത്തിൽ പെരുമാറുക, അന്യായമായ രീതിയിൽ പെരുമാറുക. See Mess about meaning in Malayalam.
What part of speech is mess about?: Mess about is a verb.
What is the past tense of mess about?: The past tense of mess about is messed about.

Adapted from Wiktionary: mess about (page history and authors); mess about (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “mess about.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mess_about. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.