fanny about
English
Alternative forms
- fanny around
Pronunciation
Audio (AU) (file)
Verb
fanny about (third-person singular simple present fannies about, present participle fannying about, simple past and past participle fannied about)
- (chiefly Britain, intransitive, idiomatic) To waste time or fool around; to engage in activity which produces little or no accomplishment.
- 1977, Jon Fleming et al., Soldiers on Everest, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, p. 97:
- Then he dithered and fannied about.
- 2007, Philip Bryer, None of Your Business, →ISBN, page 151:
- Johnson waited for an age while the barmen tossed bottles back and forth, poured luminous liquids into glasses from great heights, and fannied about with fruit and frivolities.
- 2011, Grace Dent, The Guardian, 8 Jul 2011:
- Obviously, I smirk watching this chaos unfold, from my lofty moral vantage as a woman checking Twitter dozens of times a day, a woman who often presents her husband with meals consisting of fridge remnants as I'm too busy fannying about on the internet to cook or shop.
- 1977, Jon Fleming et al., Soldiers on Everest, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, p. 97:
- (chiefly Britain, transitive and intransitive, idiomatic) To wander about or prowl around.
- 2001, Iain Sinclair, Landor's Tower, →ISBN, page 287:
- ... the mechanic who tidied up after the Krays, took care of business while the Twins were fannying around the clubland circuit.
- 2009, Lucy Hunt, "No more broken hearts?," iafrica.com, 27 May (retrieved 8 Sept. 2009):
- Out of all the random cities one gets to fanny about in Europe, all my flings are descending onto Luxembourg like a plague of horny man-teens.
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Synonyms
- (waste time): faff around, bum around, putter, fart around (mildly vulgar), beat the meat (vulgar)
- (wander or prowl around): bum around