arse about

English

Alternative forms

• arse-about (adjective)

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Verb

arse about (third-person singular simple present arses about, present participle arsing about, simple past and past participle arsed about)

1. (Commonwealth, UK, Ireland) Alternative form of arse around
2. (obsolete, slang) To turn round.

Adjective

arse about (not comparable)

1. (slang, UK, Ireland, Commonwealth) The wrong way round; exactly opposite to that which is desirable; contrary; conceptually inverted; wrong.

   You've got this arse-about!

   • 1995, David Wills, Prosthesis, Stanford University Press, page 207:

     For the dome of the belly turned arse about has its parallel in the eye that falls out like the contents of a broken egg and that in its evocation of and preempting of regeneration becomes, in Bataille's novel, unremittingly erotic and polymorphously perverse.

   • 2007, L. J. Spears, Jack Flagg‎^[1], page 66:

     Strike me if wasn't thinking old Colonel Bill had got it arse about.

   • 2008, Kieran Kelly, Aspiring, Pan MacMillan Australia, page 65:

     ‘This is arse-about, you know,’ I said. ‘You′ve got the athletic skills, and I'm the one going mountain climbing. […] .’

References

• [Francis] Grose [et al.] (1811) “Arse about”, in Lexicon Balatronicum. A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence. […], London: […] C. Chappell, […], →OCLC.