Word.ws English Dictionary

monkeying around

monkeying around is the present participle and gerund of monkey around.

Meaning of monkey around

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

Questions about monkeying around

What is monkeying around the present participle and gerund of?
Monkeying around is the present participle and gerund of monkey around.

Words near monkeying around in the dictionary

  1. monkeyfying
  2. monkeygland
  3. monkeyhood
  4. monkeying
  5. monkeying about
  6. monkeying around
  7. monkeying up
  8. monkeyish
  9. monkeyishly
  10. monkeyishness
  11. monkeyism

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: monkeying around (page history and authors); 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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