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Glite Dictionary
😜 To play or joke 💋 To cheat sexually
to fool around

to fool around

35 8.3
To have sex with someone who is not your husband or wife
  • phrasal verb
  • /fuːl əˈraʊnd/
  • NSFW
translation icon : poner los cuernos
  • Or they might say, yeah, I did fool around with someone else while you were out of town.
  • fool around with somebody else
  • husband fooling around
  • wife fooling around

Or they might say, yeah, I did fool around with someone else while you were out of town.

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Examples

  • And they know that Carmody said he was fooling around with an FBI agent named DeDe, and that's the name on that card.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • The first time, she was fooling around with two guys from the pep band, and things got kind of wild.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • Mark: How do you know she wants to fool around with me?

    Fiction book (1999)

  • The number of married men, even with kids, who fool around with guys on the side is very large.

    Blog text (19)

  • Since I met you, baby, I fooled around and fell in love.

    Queens Logic (1991)

  • "In Texas," said Earl, "the married ones go to another town when they want to fool around."

    Fiction book (1999)

  • We didn't have sex, but we fooled around.

    Fiction book (1994)

  • I'm just trying to figure out why men fool around and how they rationalize it to themselves.

    Blog text (19)

  • Well, his father had been caught fooling around with somebody else's wife or daughter at the time.

    The Diary Of A CEO

  • She admitted to fooling around with a coworker while on a business trip.

Synonyms

to cheat on
vsto fool around
  • NSFW
323 3.3

To have sex with someone who is not your partner

is the informal expression that stresses adultery rather than neutral wording
to cheat
vsto fool around
  • NSFW
265 4.0

To have sex with someone who is not your partner

is the informal expression that highlights adultery rather than neutral speech
to sleep around
vsto fool around
  • NSFW
10 8.8

To have sex with many people without a steady partner

refers instead to sexual unfaithfulness with a single outside partner
sleeping around
vsto fool around
  • NSFW
9 9.1

Having sex with many different people without a steady partner

refers instead to unfaithful relations with someone outside the regular partner
to play around
vsto fool around
  • NSFW
8 7.9

To have sex with someone outside your relationship

is the same meaning but used as a common everyday expression

Antonyms

to commit
706 3.4

To give time, money, or effort to something

How Faithful

to flirt
267 3.1
to fool around
  • NSFW
35 8.3
to betray
  • NSFW
76 4.6

Surface Forms

fool around infinitive
fooled around past
fooled around past participle
fooling around present participle
fools around third person singular

Morphology

fool + around

The meaning is directly built from 'fool' (behave foolishly) plus 'around' (aimlessly/moving about), so a learner who knows both words can infer 'to behave in a playful, silly, or aimless way'. This verb + particle pattern with 'around' indicating aimlessness is common and cross-linguistically recognizable, making the expression readily comprehensible to B1 learners.

Etymology

Fool around for secret sexual activity may come from the idea of fool as 'play' and around as 'not serious'. One vivid picture is someone secretly 'playing' with another person behind their partner's back, so the phrase came to mean 'to have a sexual relationship with someone who is not your partner'.