1 a little more or less than; a little before or after
SYNAPPROXIMATELY:
It costs about $10. * They waited (for) about an hour. * He arrived (at) about ten.
2 nearly; very close to:
I'm just about ready. * This is about the best we can hope for.
3 (especially BrE) in many directions; here and there:
The children were rushing about in the garden.
4 (especially BrE) in no particular order; in various places:
Her books were lying about on the floor.
5 (especially BrE) doing nothing in particular:
People were standing about in the road.
6 (especially BrE) able to be found in a place:
There was nobody about. * There's a lot of flu about. * She's somewhere about-I saw her a few minutes ago.
7 (technical or formal) facing the opposite direction:
He brought the ship about. -< AROUND
IDIOMS
that's about all
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for about is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is about a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, about is tagged as adverb.
Does about appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — about appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
