horse around

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horse around (third-person singular simple present horses around, present participle horsing around, simple past and past participle horsed around)

1. (intransitive, idiomatic) To engage in horseplay.

   Can we quit horsing around and get some work done?

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

   • 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 7 December 2017:

     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.

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

     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.

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

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

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

     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.

• (behave clownishly, idly): fool around, act out, clown around, goof off, muck about, muck around, muck up (Australia), yuk it up (US)

• horseplay