How to Use fool around in a Sentence

fool around

verb
  • Auburn is a basketball school now, and so this is no time to fool around.
    — Joseph Goodman | [email protected], al, 28 Jan. 2022
  • The group lingered to snap photos and fool around, building a hump of snow for taking jumps.
    — Los Angeles Times, 28 Feb. 2023
  • Two camp counselors slip away to fool around in the loft, only to be ambushed by the killer and stabbed to death.
    — Kellie B. Gormly, Smithsonian Magazine, 26 Oct. 2021
  • Flowers that were too hot for fooling around during the day find their groove at 72.
    — Bill Finch, al, 3 July 2023
  • Those who crave the thrill of a victory may embody the competitor. Bigger, bolder personalities may shine as jokers, always fooling around, or as storytellers, bringing imagination to life.
    — Julianna Bragg, CNN, 23 Feb. 2025
  • As Molly and Guy start to fool around, things get hot and heavy, but Ernie has a job to do.
    — Erin Qualey, Vulture, 7 Apr. 2025
  • Such is the cost of fooling around and faltering against so many lottery opponents along the way.
    — Ira Winderman, Sun Sentinel, 4 Apr. 2023
  • Put the jokes aside for a moment, because Seager isn’t playing like a guy who’s fooling around.
    — Shawn McFarland, Dallas News, 16 Aug. 2023
  • Zeus found out that Orion was fooling around with his daughter Artemis, the goddess of the moon.
    — Mike Lynch, Twin Cities, 8 Mar. 2026
  • Alaskan gardeners shouldn’t fool around; gardening is too important to us.
    — Jeff Lowenfels, Anchorage Daily News, 21 Oct. 2021
  • Zeus did not approve of his daughter fooling around with this mortal roughneck hunter and put out a hit on Orion.
    — Mike Lynch, Twin Cities, 8 Mar. 2026
  • The mild soy garlic sauce has a satisfyingly tangy profile, salty with a funky garlic base, while the spicy sauce does not fool around.
    — Nick Kindelsperger, chicagotribune.com, 2 Nov. 2020
  • In the second, the duo loosened up in some more casual clothes while Stallone fooled around with a guitar on a small stage.
    — Jen Juneau, Peoplemag, 7 June 2023
  • Because in spite of how new a lot of the serverless stuff was to me, this isn’t my first time fooling around with AWS.
    — Lee Hutchinson, Ars Technica, 19 July 2023
  • When a family is threatened, the adults cluster together to protect their offspring, and when things are calm the calves fool around.
    — Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 4 Sep. 2023
  • Why fool around with a convention that everyone understood and practiced?
    — Judith Martin, The Mercury News, 7 Oct. 2024
  • Oklahoma fooled around with Houston long enough to escape with a narrow 16-12 win.
    — Chase Goodbread, The Tennessean, 18 Sep. 2024
  • Of course, sometimes flirting or fooling around leads to more serious relationships.
    — Katie Jackson, Outside Online, 14 Aug. 2024
  • While the siblings have the habit of getting into troubles and to only use their creative skills to fool around, Michael sees in them a real talent.
    — Maelle Beauget-Uhl, Forbes, 5 Dec. 2024
  • The transition was rough for Ansari, who wasn’t fluent in English and often got in trouble for fooling around in school.
    — Los Angeles Times, 7 Feb. 2026
  • Winter’s adventures in dating and fooling around as a married woman with children do not disappoint.
    — Marshall Heyman, Vulture, 23 May 2024
  • Another horny couple on vacation couldn’t wait until their flight landed to fool around and insisted on doing so in the plane's cabin.
    — Sean Joseph Outkick, FOXNews.com, 27 Apr. 2026
  • With only three people serving as potential victims, there’s not much time to fool around with niceties like character development and subplots.
    — Bill Goodykoontz, The Arizona Republic, 11 Jan. 2023
  • The first half of this episode felt like the beginning of a horror movie where a bunch of unassuming college kids head out to an isolated cabin in the middle of the woods to get drunk and fool around.
    — Jodi Walker, EW.com, 23 Nov. 2020
  • Flashbacks peppered throughout the first several episodes reveal that Yasmin caught her father fooling around with a pregnant woman on the boat.
    — Eliana Dockterman, TIME, 16 Sep. 2024
  • Gisin hopes that by fooling around with measurements of these more exotic states, physicists will come to better understand the role of measurement in general.
    — Quanta Magazine, 8 Aug. 2025
  • Not too long ago, artificial intelligence was more or less a science project in which data scientists and developers fooled around with one-off small or test projects.
    — Joe McKendrick, Forbes.com, 26 Jan. 2026
  • Professional services that don’t have to actively fool around with networking hardware, or measure for curtains are the ones where workers will be most likely to work remote.
    — Kenneth Rapoza, Forbes, 12 Apr. 2021
  • Plotwise, four teens who grew up with technology and like to fool around on their laptops invading various verboten sites and having a great time doing it one day happen upon a bright idea.
    — Pete Hammond, Deadline, 8 Mar. 2025
  • This assumes precautions are in place, like lifting only when supervised; performing all movements with proper, strict, form; never fooling around and seeing who can lift the most weight, etc.
    — Bryant Stamford, The Courier-Journal, 18 July 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'fool around.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: