pal around

verb

To spend time with someone as a friend.

“John plans to pal around with Joe today.”

Meanings

verbpal around (third-person singular simple present pals around, present participle palling around, simple past and past participle palled around)

present singular third person pals around · participle present palling around · participle past palled around · past palled around

  1. informalintransitiveTo spend time with someone as a friend.

    John plans to pal around with Joe today.

    1 more example

    They had a respectful interaction, not a sour note between them, but they never palled around outside of work.

    2019, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Sex and the City and Us, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 94

    Synonyms: hang around

  2. broadlyinformalintransitiveTo associate with someone, especially secretly or when viewed as objectionable; to fraternize.

    Hours later he travelled to the G7 in Italy, where he giggled with Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister, embraced Pope Francis and palled around with Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the IMF.

    2024 June 20, “Javier Milei has turned Argentina into a libertarian laboratory”, in The Economist, →ISSN, archived from the original on 24 Jun 2024
    4 more examples

    If independents do turn out, it’s hard to see them turning out en masse for Lake, whose campaign is fueled more by outrage and theatrics than by any suggestion that she's ready to run a fast growing state of 7.2 million people. She has endorsed candidates who show an appalling tendency to pal around with white nationalists.

    2022 July 6, Laurie Roberts, “Independent voters, take note: Kari Lake still leads in latest poll of GOP governor's race”, in Yahoo! News, archived from the original on 07 Jul 2022

    “While Kim Reynolds and Chuck Grassley pal around with a defeated former president who continues to attack our democracy, Iowa Democrats are busy knocking doors, meeting Iowans where they are and mobilizing voters," Iowa Democratic Party Chair Ross Wilburn said in a statement.

    2022 November 3, Brianne Pfannenstiel, Tyler Jett, quoting Ross Wilburn, “Donald Trump teases Iowa crowd: 'I will very, very, very probably' run for president”, in Des Moines Register, archived from the original on 17 Feb 2026

    To be clear: Musk’s move is not a First Amendment issue, any more than it was when the previous regime suspended Donald Trump (among others). He has every right to ban whomever he wants. He has every right to bring Trump, along with whatever white supremacists and bigots and purveyors of hate speech and misinformation he wants to pal around with, back to Twitter.

    2022 December 16, Bill Goodykoontz, “Elon Musk can ban all the journalists he wants from Twitter. But he's a free-speech fraud”, in AZCentral, archived from the original on 16 Jun 2023

    “This Supreme Court has lost its ethical compass,” Whitehouse, who chairs the Judiciary’s subcommittee on court oversight, said in a statement. “It’s no wonder that the American people are losing faith in the idea that they can get a fair shake before the nation’s highest court when they see a Supreme Court justice openly flouting basic disclosure rules in order to pal around with billionaires in secret.”

    2023 April 10, Jennifer Bendery, quoting Sheldon Whitehouse, “Senate Democrats Urge John Roberts To Probe Clarence Thomas' Undisclosed Gifts”, in HuffPost, archived from the original on 27 Apr 2023

Synonyms & antonyms

verbTo spend time with someone as a friend.

Also see

Origin

Cite this entry
APA

pal around. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pal%20around

MLA

“pal around.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pal%20around. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “pal around,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pal%20around.

Source: pal around on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.