Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to act half-heartedly, to engage in pointless, time-wasting activity, to mess around.

1896		E. Pugh Man of Straw 10: Me and Bill we lights in here and gets a-mucking about, no harm in it.
1906		New Boys’ World 29 Dec. 95: Wot right ’as he got to be mucking abaht the barracks at all in the night?
1915		P. Macgill Amateur Army 66: You’ll pay dearly for it this time. [...] Three days C.B.. your muckin’ about’ll cost you.
1929		(con. 1916) F. Manning Her Privates We (1986) 115: Just muck about a bit in the street to keep the men together.
1937		Jennings & Madge May the Twelfth: Mass-Observation Day-Surveys 3:34: Then we went up to the pub and stayed there until midnight, getting blind drunk and singing and dancing and mucking about in general.
1937		R. Westerby Wide Boys Never Work (1938) 193: We were mugs to have mucked about and lost that job.
1940		M. Marples Public School Slang 122: muck3. (Westminster, c. 1900), to idle, waste time. 4. muck about, muck round: the more recent adn widely used equivalent of (3) .
1941		K. Tennant Battlers 45: ‘Hang on a moment,’ Duke said suddenly. ‘I want to go to the railway station.’ ‘Why? Ain’t we had enough muckin’ about for one night?’.
1943		in T. Harrisson Mass-Observation War Factory: Report 9: Oh, we had a lovely day Saturday. We just mucked about all morning, and then in the afternoon we went shopping.
1950		A. Buckeridge Jennings Goes To School 113: If you’d let me get on with cleaning [...] instead of mucking about with wet hose.
1966		B. Reckord Skyvers II i: I’ve made up me mind ... I’m gonna be doin’ something – not just muckin’ around.
1967		J. Wynnum I’m a Jack, All Right 17: Don’t be bloody mad [...] Stop mucking around.
1970		H.E. Bates A Little of What You Fancy (1985) 555: He thought they ought to be plain but posh. No mucking about.
1976		D. Ireland Glass Canoe (1982) 188: She paid a lot of attention to him, though, and mucked round quite a long time before he was given his head.
1982		G. Newbold Big Huey 11: By the end of ’74 I was already mucking around with the odd barbiturate.
1988		A. Payne ‘The Last Video Show’ Minder [TV script] 52: Don’t muck about. Have you got it or not?
1992		in R. Graef Living Dangerously 77: We used to muck around and rebel aginst our parents.
1999		Indep. Rev. 22 July 8: Kept a pencil behind his ear and mucked about in the shed.
2001		I. Welsh Glue 44: We wir jist muckin aboot, ah tells ehr.
2012		(con. 1943) G.S. Manson Coorparoo Blues [ebook] He didn’t muck around. ‘You better come and see me’.
2018		R. O’Neill ‘Ocker’ in The Drover’s Wives (2019) 180: Her four ankle-biters mucking around out in the vegie patch.

2. to ruin, to mess up, to annoy; usu. in passive.

c.1916		Daily Liar 3/1: Try before you buy. If you don’t Want the Goods, don’t muck ’em about.
1922		‘J.H. Ross’ Mint (1955) 145: Not one of his efforts tried to be a P.T. exercise: just ‘mucking about,’ inflicted maliciously in his meanest style.
1944		L. Glassop We Were the Rats 138: We’re being mucked around by experts.
1949		R. Park Poor Man’s Orange 4: I won’t go into a home for the dying. I been on me own all me life, and I’m not going to be mucked about with now.
1958		(con. 1940s) B. Behan Borstal Boy 123: In a quiet way, he mucked them about.
1963		(con. 1944) L. Glassop Rats in New Guinea 113: We’re being mucked about by experts.
1974		D. Ireland Burn 25: An’ who let you muck about with me fish?
1977		(con. 1969) M. Herr Dispatches 237: The Dinks have been mucking about with Page.
1979		F. Norman Too Many Crooks Spoil the Caper 18: If I tumble yuh bin muckin’ me about [...] me an’ Drummer ain’t gonna pay yuh anuvva visit an’ ’ave yuh guts for garters.
1982		W. Wharton Midnight Clear 92: I’m doing it again, mucking around in somebody else’s private world.
1999		N. Cohn Yes We Have No 310: Letting the devil muck us about.
2003		G. Tate Midnight Lightning 8: Hendrix continues to jack up all our hidebound notions [...] and for this mucking about he deserves his own Mythologies or Grammatology.

3. to fondle intimately, to seduce.

1919		‘Bartimeus’ ‘The Wooing of Mouldy Jakes’ in Awfully Big Adventure 75: It’s a good life, afloat. A clean life ... Better’n mucking about ashore with women.
1929		K.S. Prichard Coonardoo 97: I don’t want you to go mucking round with gins. But I’d rather a gin than a Jessica.
1930		(con. 1914–18) ‘Skibboo’ Brophy & Partridge Songs and Sl. of the British Soldier 52: My fair daughter is far too young / To be mucked about by a son of a gun.
1945		‘Henry Green’ Loving (1978) 71: You can muck about with Kate all you please but Edith’s close season, get me?
1951		D. Stivens Jimmy Brockett 31: Pearl comes over close to me and starts mucking around. [Ibid.] 192: Since I’d had young Jimmy to interest me, I hadn’t done as much mucking about as before. But I liked a bit of horizontal exercise as much as the next bloke.
1962		R. Hauser Homosexual Society 114: I’m against the death penalty but I think it ought to be kept for those people who muck around with kids.
1966		B. Reckord Skyvers I ii: She said when ’e mucked about wiv ’er ’e couldn’t do nothin’.
1987		M. Bail Holden’s Performance (1989) 291: That sister of yours: I suppose you know she’s been mucking around with Mister McBee?
1993		G. Disher Deathdeal [ebook] ‘Too buggered to muck around’.
1998		G. Burn Happy Like Murderers 355: She was worried that her friend might have been ‘mucked about with’ by her father.

4. (Aus.) to practise, to to test out a sitiuation.

1996

P. Temple Bad Debts (2012) [ebook] Have a little muck about, get the feel olf him [i.e. a racehorse].