Word.ws English Dictionary

messing about

messing about is the present participle and gerund 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 messing about

What is messing about the present participle and gerund of?
Messing about is the present participle and gerund of mess about.

Words near messing about in the dictionary

  1. Messines
  2. Messinese
  3. messiness
  4. messinesses
  5. messing
  6. messing about
  7. messing around
  8. messing up
  9. messing with
  10. Messing-cum-Inworth
  11. Messinger

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: messing 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: “messing about.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/messing_about. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.