faff about

present singular third person faffs about · participle present faffing about · participle past faffed about · past faffed about

1. UKintransitiveTo waste time; to spend time idly.

   I decided to stop faffing about and get some work done.

   3 more examples

   She faffed about so much, she never got to eat her breakfast.

   It's a shame; not only are nuts quite ridiculously nutritious but, as anyone who's ever shelled out (sorry) for a tiny glass of pistachios in a pub will know, they're a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. But although I happen to have a soft spot for nut roast – an option often preferable to the meat that emerged from the school kitchen – it seems I'm in a cranky minority. A request for recipe recommendations was met with a polite silence on Twitter: vegetarianism, apparently, has moved on a bit. You don't see Yotam Ottolenghi faffing about with nut roasts, do you? But I'm determined to revive the fortunes of this much-maligned classic. After all, Christmas isn't Christmas without a luxury nut selection.

   2011 December 15, Felicity Cloake, “How to cook the perfect nut roast”, in Guardian

   My train will be a pair of Class 158s that splits at Machynlleth, with the front unit going to Aberystwyth and the rear to Pwllheli. As the former is my first destination, I need to make sure I'm in the right unit to save faffing about at the split.

   2026 August 5, 'Mystery Shopper', “Gauging the standard in Wales”, in RAIL, number 1067, page 50

   Synonyms: faff around, fuck about, fuck around, dick around, mess about, mess around, arse about, arse around