Word.ws English Dictionary

wait around

wait around verb: to spend an especially lengthy period of time inactively, while expecting the arrival of someone or while anticipating some other event, often impatiently and often without a satisfactory outcome.

Verb

wait around (third-person singular simple present waits around, present participle waiting around, simple past and past participle waited around)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To spend an especially lengthy period of time inactively, while expecting the arrival of someone or while anticipating some other event, often impatiently and often without a satisfactory outcome.
    • Looks as if we were all sold out. But if you'll wait around till the old man comes along maybe he can put his hand on it.1911 October, Edith Wharton, chapter VI, in Ethan Frome (The Scribner Library; SL8), New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, page 110
    • "A terrible organization!" said Nikita Khrushchev, all but shuddering at the memory. "If you could see how the delegates behave! […]. They do not participate in work, but just sit there and wait around in case there's any voting."1960 October 31, “United Nations: Last Words”, in Time, retrieved 18 Feb 2020

Forms of wait around

third-person singular presentwaits around
present participlewaiting around
past participlewaited around
pastwaited around

Questions about wait around

What does wait around mean?
Wait around means to spend an especially lengthy period of time inactively, while expecting the arrival of someone or while anticipating some other event, often impatiently and often without a satisfactory outcome.
What part of speech is wait around?
Wait around is a verb.
What is the past tense of wait around?
The past tense of wait around is waited around.

Words near wait around in the dictionary

  1. waistwrap
  2. waistwraps
  3. wait
  4. wait a minute
  5. wait and see
  6. wait around
  7. wait for
  8. wait for Godot
  9. wait for it
  10. wait for the ball to drop
  11. wait for the cat to jump

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wait 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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