to play around
94
3.4
- phrasal verb
- /pleɪ əˈraʊnd/
- Informal
- He decided to play around with different recipes to find the best one.
Loading YouTube…
Watch on YouTubeIt's just me playing around with ASMR.
- It's just me playing around with ASMR.
- As professors, we get to play around with this a bit, right?
- And then for a few months, I was playing around with, let's say, nicotine gums.
- Like what's a fun thing to play around with self supervised learning on?
- I just want to play around with the Sunny's color that I have.
- So I, I began playing around with fasting.
- So have fun with it, play around, but be safe.
- I can draw, I can paint, I design jewelry, I play around with designing clothes.
- I'm going to play around with the front to see what looks good for you.
- So I might play around with like some of these colours here.
- So you can do all the other stuff and also play around with gender.
Examples
-
I'm going to play around with the front to see what looks good for you.
-
I just had to play around with the delays.
-
OK, so you can play around with things in multiple ways.
-
So we're going to play around with how we should design these.
-
So have fun with it, play around, but be safe.
-
I was just playing around.
-
Just play around with it.
-
Then I took my list and played around with it a little.
Blog text (12) -
And I'm going to play around with the colors.
-
I can draw, I can paint, I design jewelry, I play around with designing clothes.
Synonyms
148
3.6
Act in a silly, playful way instead of working
133
4.1
To spend time doing playful or unplanned activities
50
4.8
To try an activity in a casual way without serious effort
49
2.4
To say funny things and behave in a playful way to make people laugh
22
4.5
To think about an idea or plan without deciding
2
4.2
Taking part in an activity without serious effort or commitment
1
8.0
To play an instrument in a relaxed way without serious practice
1
9.6
To enjoy yourself by behaving in a lively, playful way
To act in a silly, playful way instead of being serious
Antonyms
How Serious
∞
2.6
738
1.6
266
2.8
60
4.5
- Informal
94
3.4
- Informal
133
4.1
Surface Forms
Morphology
play + around
The verb 'play' (behave unseriously or toy with) combined with 'around' (in different directions/with others) gives a loose, partially predictable sense of non-serious sexual/romantic behaviour, so a learner might guess a general idea of casualness. However the specific sense 'to have affairs/commit adultery' is colloquial and sufficiently idiomatic that it is not fully derivable from the constituents without prior exposure, and cross-linguistic realizations vary.
Etymology
Play around comes from the simple image of someone literally playing around objects or ideas, moving things and trying them for fun. So it now means 'to do something in a casual, playful, or experimental way'.