around

/əraʊnd/7 verbsVowel-initial — links backwards

Movement with no fixed destination, or a turn to face the other way.

AROUND adds a strong flavour of purposelessness: hang around, mess around, fool around. Compare look for (targeted) with look around (browsing).

Its other sense is rotation or reversal — turn around, come around — including the figurative reversal of an opinion.

What it does to the sound

Like AWAY, it starts on an unstressed schwa and takes the main stress on its second syllable: a-ROUND. The verb links straight in, so hang around is one four-syllable run.

What AROUND means

Aimlessness — no particular purpose

The activity has no goal, and that is the point.

hang around mess aroundfool aroundsit around

Rotation — turn to face the other way

A physical or figurative reversal.

turn around come around get around show around

Every verb that takes AROUND

The complete list — 7 of them. The section above groups the common ones by what AROUND is doing.

The particle AROUND — what it does to a verb