potter about

potter about (third-person singular simple present potters about, present participle pottering about, simple past and past participle pottered about)

1. (British) To potter, to be gently active doing various things in an almost aimless manner.

   I like to relax pottering about the house doing this and that at the weekends.

   • 1835, Dorah Mahony, Six Months in a House of Correction‎^[1]:

     So after "pottering about" and "daudling" a little, we moved up State Street, still attended by the same honorary retinue.

   • 1884, Hartmann Henry Sultzberger, editor, All about Opium‎^[2], page 176:

     Each man helps himself, potters about the little place, and lounges on the bed with perfect freedom, as if in the habit of doing the same thing nightly, and so periodically reimbursed the landlord in a lump sum.

   • 1913, D.H. Lawrence, chapter 12, in Sons and Lovers:

     Slowly the hours crawled. His father got up; he heard him pottering about.

   • 1919, W. Somerset Maugham, chapter 15, in The Moon and Sixpence:

     "I remember before we were married he used to potter about with a paint-box. But you never saw such daubs. We used to chaff him. He had absolutely no gift for anything like that."

   • 1947 January and February, “Notes and News: Drivers' Reprisals”, in Railway Magazine, page 53:

     Some ten years ago, an evening excursion train from the Walsall area to Manchester, when travelling well over the heavily-graded Walsall-Rugeley line, was brought to a stand at a level crossing at Hednesford by the tardiness of a gatekeeper, who was pottering about in his garden instead of attending to his duties.

   • 1959 February, G. Freeman Allen, “Southampton—Gateway to the Ocean”, in Trains Illustrated, page 91:

     [...] indeed, in April of that year five "E4s" were pottering about the port, [...].

• potter around

• potter