Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to waste time, to idly wander about.

1664		C. Cotton Virgil Travestie (1765) Bk I 9: Then (at his Ease) Arsing about.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 307: Arsing around from one pub to another.
1930		(con. 1918) J. Hanley German Prisoner 14: We can’t arse about here much longer.
1938		N. Lindsay Age Of Consent 126: Have to get out of here [...] Man goes clean off his crumpet, arsing about a bally lonely hole like this all day with nothing to do.
1941		P. Larkin letter 10 Nov. in Thwaite Sel. Letters (1992) 25: I remember with envy the evenings we used to have about a year ago: certain percentage of creative arsing-about.
1944		‘Nevil Shute’ Pastoral 22: Up in London you arse around and go to the local and meet the boys.
1947		N. Streatfeild Grass in Piccadilly 148: Mrs. Dill would understand. She would never arse about yattering all over the place.
1952		J. Cleary Sundowners 124: Christ, the way we’re arsing about —.
1958		(con. 1940s) B. Behan Borstal Boy 191: This arsing around the chapel is as good [...] as a trip to Switzerland.
1962		B. Behan Brendan Behan’s Island (1984) 18: A generation or so ago they were arsing around the bog, and a bowl of stirabout and a couple of platefuls of spuds would have cured all the Angst from here back to Norway.
1977		(con. 1930s) S. McAughtry Sinking of the Kenbane Head 61: You should be in a good job instead of arsing around here.
1993		B. Moore Lex. of Cadet Lang. 14: arse around to idle, to loaf around desultorily, to be in a state of dolce far niente, to be in a condition wherein one needs to get one’s arse in gear.
2000		S. Maloney Big Ask 97: Darren’s up on the roof, arsing around.
2000		N. Griffiths Grits 8: Fuck all that arsing about with flour an butter an milk, life’s too short.

2. to turn round.

c.1786		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions n.p.: Arse about. Turn round.
1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (3rd edn).
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.

3. to fool around.

1973		(ref. to 1930) E. Williams Emlyn 175: He and his buddy started to dance together, arsing around, you know ...No, in the buff, except for socks and shoes, hats on the back of their heads.
1980		J. McClure Spike Island (1981) 130: ‘Arson, was it?’ ‘Arsin’ about more like!’.
1983		M. Read Scouting for Boys in Best Radio Plays (1984) 192: Will you stop arsing around and listen!
1998		P. McCabe Breakfast on Pluto 53: The cut of the cunt — arsing about my television with a head on him like Barney Gillis’s cockerel!
2004		T. Winton Turning (2005) 151: The kids arse about on escalators in department stores.

to leave, to exit.

1979		‘Iceberg Slim’ Airtight Willie and Me 16: We caught a glimpse of her cannon assing it down the alley.
2000		N. Griffiths Grits 80: En wir in-a car an fuckin arsin it awey.

to leave quickly.

1937–84		Partridge DSUE (1984) 27/1: C.19–20.
1999		M. Quinion World Wide Words 27 Mar. 🌐 It may have been formed after the model of several other similar military expressions. An older one is arsed off, from arse off, a low slang term from the later part of the nineteenth century that meant ‘to leave quickly.’.