Word.ws English Dictionary

messed about

messed about is the simple past and past participle of mess about.

Meaning of mess about

Verb

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

  1. (intransitive) To misbehave
    • Kids! Stop messing about and do your work!
  2. (intransitive) To be in a casual non-committal relationship
    • Anna and I are just messing about; this isn't going to last.
  3. (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

Questions about messed about

What is messed about the simple past and past participle of?
Messed about is the simple past and past participle of mess about.

Words near messed about in the dictionary

  1. messboys
  2. messdeck
  3. messdecks
  4. Messecar
  5. messed
  6. messed about
  7. messed around
  8. messed up
  9. messed with
  10. messed-up
  11. messed-upness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: messed about (page history and authors); mess 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: “messed about.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/messed_about. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.