potter about

present singular third person potters about · participle present pottering about · participle past pottered about · past pottered about

1. UKTo potter, to be gently active doing various things in an almost aimless manner.

   I like to relax pottering about the house doing this and that at the weekends.

   5 more examples

   So after "pottering about" and "daudling" a little, we moved up State Street, still attended by the same honorary retinue.

   1835, Dorah Mahony, Six Months in a House of Correction

   Each man helps himself, potters about the little place, and lounges on the bed with perfect freedom, as if in the habit of doing the same thing nightly, and so periodically reimbursed the landlord in a lump sum.

   1884, Hartmann Henry Sultzberger, editor, All about Opium, page 176

   Slowly the hours crawled. His father got up; he heard him pottering about.

   1913, D.H. Lawrence, chapter 12, in Sons and Lovers

   "I remember before we were married he used to potter about with a paint-box. But you never saw such daubs. We used to chaff him. He had absolutely no gift for anything like that."

   1919, W. Somerset Maugham, chapter 15, in The Moon and Sixpence

   Some ten years ago, an evening excursion train from the Walsall area to Manchester, when travelling well over the heavily-graded Walsall-Rugeley line, was brought to a stand at a level crossing at Hednesford by the tardiness of a gatekeeper, who was pottering about in his garden instead of attending to his duties.

   1947 January and February, “Notes and News: Drivers' Reprisals”, in Railway Magazine, page 53

   Synonyms: potter around