fanny about

fanny about

1. To waste time or procrastinate by doing something unproductive or unhelpful; to fool around or spend time idly. Primarily heard in UK. Would you quit fannying about and give me a hand cleaning the house? I should have started this essay last week, but I've been fannying about with my new video game console.
2. To wander around a place, especially in an aimless or idle manner. Primarily heard in UK. After I quit my job, I spent six months fannying about Paris.
See also: fanny
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • any time means no time
  • any time
  • anytime
  • (it's) (a)bout time
  • about time
  • at all hours
  • at all hours (of the day and night)
  • about time too
  • any old time
  • ahead of (someone's or something's) time
References in periodicals archive
The second and more significant occurrence appears when Sir Thomas interrogates Fanny about her refusal of Henry Crawford's proposal:
Amelia and Susan both are quintessentially prone to faults of conduct; as we have seen, these faults are what initially astonishes Fanny about Lovers' Vows.
Keats then started to teach Fanny about poetry, much to the dismay of his good friend Mr Brown (Paul Schneider).
Thus Henry Crawford's delighted reminiscence to Fanny about the rehearsals for Lovers' Vows--that yet "untasted pleasure" in "all the riot of his gratifications" (145, 144)--is received by Fanny with "silent indignation," and her brief but outraged response to his wish that Sir Thomas's return had been delayed by a week causes Mr.
It is in the course of a discussion between Edmund and Fanny about the labored after-dinner conversations that we learn of Fanny's famous question about the slave trade--a question that brings the noise of the outside world into Mansfield by reminding us that the violent exploitation of slaves underwrites the Bertrams prosperous lives.
Might there be an echo of Portia's speech to Nerissa early in The Merchant of Venice in Mary's tough comment to Fanny about Dr.