Word.ws English Dictionary

monkey around

monkey around verb: to act foolishly.

Verb

monkey around (third-person singular simple present monkeys around, present participle monkeying around, simple past and past participle monkeyed around)

  1. (idiomatic, informal) To act foolishly.
    • I wanna be a man, mancub / And stroll right into town / And be just like the other men / I'm tired of monkeyin' around!1967, Robert Bernard Sherman, Richard Morton Sherman, “I Wan’na Be like You (The Monkey Song)”, in The Jungle Book, performed by Louis Prima and Phil Harris
    Synonyms:
    monkey about

Synonyms of monkey around

Forms of monkey around

third-person singular presentmonkeys around
present participlemonkeying around
past participlemonkeyed around
pastmonkeyed around

Questions about monkey around

What does monkey around mean?
Monkey around means to act foolishly.
What part of speech is monkey around?
Monkey around is a verb.
What is the past tense of monkey around?
The past tense of monkey around is monkeyed around.

Words near monkey around in the dictionary

  1. monkettes
  2. monkey
  3. monkey about
  4. monkey apple
  5. monkey apples
  6. monkey around
  7. monkey bag
  8. monkey bags
  9. monkey ball
  10. monkey balls
  11. monkey barge

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: monkey 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-monkey around.ogg.

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