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Monkey Business

Trickery, shady acts, mischievous behavior, suspicious actions

Etymology:

  • The expression can be used to represent two sets of meanings. First is to in literal meanings to acts in a comical manner just like a monkey. Second meaning of the expression is to represent some trickery or suspicious actions. The difference can be explained by the situation that in one meaning a student can be sent to the principal’s office while the second meaning can be explained by a politician being jailed due to monkey business. This idiom was introduced in the 20th century in American language. It belongs to countless number of expressions in the category of comparing human behavior to that of animal.
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He has suffered a lot just because of monkey business.

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Submitted on February 25, 2019

Additional definitions for 'Monkey Business':

monkey businessAn activity that is considered silly, or stupid, or time-wasting.
monkey businessAn activity that may be considered illegal, questionable, or a vice, but not felonious.
monkey businessDo your homework and forget about all this monkey business.
monkey businessWasting time, or effort, on some foolish project.
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Nearby phrases

Some more phrases from our dictionary similar to Monkey Business

mr. all businesssoftly, softly caught the monkeymake a monkey out offunny businessnone of someone's businessplace of businesslike nobody's businessin businessmonkey runlike nobody's businessmonkey rungive someone the businessgive someone the businessgrease monkey

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