Word.ws English Dictionary

waiting around

waiting around is the present participle and gerund of wait around.

Meaning of wait around

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

Questions about waiting around

What is waiting around the present participle and gerund of?
Waiting around is the present participle and gerund of wait around.

Words near waiting around in the dictionary

  1. waitin'
  2. waiting
  3. waiting a minute
  4. waiting and seeing
  5. waiting area
  6. waiting around
  7. waiting for
  8. waiting for Godot
  9. waiting for the ball to drop
  10. waiting for the cat to jump
  11. waiting for the other shoe to drop

Source and license

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