horse around

present singular third person horses around · participle present horsing around · participle past horsed around · past horsed around

1. idiomaticintransitiveTo engage in horseplay.

   Can we quit horsing around and get some work done?

   5 more examples

   Stop horsing around with the controls, before you break something.

   As Norah Jones coos sweet nothings on the soundtrack, the happy couple—played by Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler—canoodle through a Manhattan montage, making pasta for two, swimming through a pile of autumn leaves, and horsing around at a fruit stand.

   2014 June 26, A. A. Dowd, “Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler Spoof Rom-com Clichés in They Came Together”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 07 Dec 2017

   A novel about writing a novel; a narrator who is and is not the author; general metafictional horsing around reflecting both the author’s and reader’s ambivalence about the novel.

   2015 January 14, Catherine O'Flynn, “10:04 by Ben Lerner review”, in The Guardian

   "Genghis Khan! Abe Lincoln! That’s funny until someone gets hurt." But Genghis Khan and Lincoln keep horsing around.

   1989, Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (script)

   I told him that if I passed out before we got to a hospital I wanted him to see to it that no quack horsed around with my leg.

   1943, Ted W. Lawson, Bob Considine, Thirty Seconds over Tokyo

   Synonyms: fool around, act out, clown around, goof off, muck about, muck around, muck up, yuk it up