knock around

From knock + around.

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knock around (third-person singular simple present knocks around, present participle knocking around, simple past and past participle knocked around)

1. (informal) Synonym of knock about.

   I like to knock around the garden on Saturdays.

   I used to knock around with John when we were younger.

   I’ve got some scissors knocking around somewhere in the kitchen.

   It was known that he would knock his wife around when he had been drinking.

   • 1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 5: Lotus Eaters]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC, part II [Odyssey], page 72:

     He moved to go. / ― Well, glad to see you looking fit, he said. Meet you knocking around.

   • 2021 December 1, “Stop & Examine”, in Rail, number 945, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire: Bauer Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 71:

     Film-making seems to run in the family. Charlie Spencer Chaplin and my great-grandmother were siblings, and my grandad used to knock around London with Charlie when they were lads.

   • 2025 June 16, Eric Bulson, “Yes I Will Read ‘Ulysses’ Yes”, in The Atlantic‎^[1], →ISSN:

     And Sylvia Beach, a fellow American and the fearless publisher of Ulysses, was still knocking around Paris willing to entertain questions.

• knockaround (noun)