Phrasal verb
faff around
Definition
phrasal verb. to spend time doing small, unimportant things without being very productive.
phrasal verb. to engage in unproductive, disorganized, or trivial activity; marked British informal register, often used to express frustration with a lack of progress.
Examples
“Stop faffing around and help me pack these boxes.”
“We spent the whole morning faffing around with the printer instead of actually finishing the report.”
“While the committee faffed around with minor font changes on the agenda, the actual deadline for the project passed unnoticed.”
Examples
simple
“Stop faffing around and help me pack these boxes.”
contextual
“We spent the whole morning faffing around with the printer instead of actually finishing the report.”
complex
“While the committee faffed around with minor font changes on the agenda, the actual deadline for the project passed unnoticed.”
Usage
highly informal and primarily used in British English; usually implies the person is wasting time on purpose or through poor organization.
Teaching tip
useful for teaching culturally specific British pragmatics; contrast with 'mess around' or 'dilly-dally' to show how 'faff' implies a specific kind of fussy, disorganized effort.
Pitfall
He was faffing around the house.
He was faffing around.
while 'around' can be a preposition, 'faff around' is usually used as an intransitive unit to describe a general state of being unproductive.
Phrasal verb
Particles
around
Separability
inseparable
Pattern
faff + around
Synonyms
Antonyms
Grammar
Scan code
englishreference.com/q/faff-around