Word.ws English Dictionary

throwing about

throwing about is the present participle and gerund of throw about.

Meaning of throw about

Verb

throw about (third-person singular simple present throws about, present participle throwing about, simple past threw about, past participle thrown about)

  1. (obsolete) To change direction; to change from one tack to another.
    • That now vnto despaire I gin to growe,
      And meane for better winde about to throwe.1591, Ed[mund] Sp[enser], “Prosopopoia. Or Mother Hubberds Tale.”, in Complaints. Containing Sundrie Small Poemes of the Worlds Vanitie. […], London: […] William Ponsonbie, […], →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    go about, put about
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see throw, about.
    • When the ship entered the violent storm, all the passengers were thrown about.

Questions about throwing about

What is throwing about the present participle and gerund of?
Throwing about is the present participle and gerund of throw about.

Words near throwing about in the dictionary

  1. throwing a wobbly
  2. throwing a wrench in
  3. throwing a wrench in the gears
  4. throwing a wrench in the works
  5. throwing a wrench into the works
  6. throwing about
  7. throwing an ant into a sty
  8. throwing an eye
  9. throwing aside
  10. throwing away
  11. throwing away the key

Source and license

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