behave vs mess around

behave

verb
  • To conduct (oneself) well, or in a given way. 

  • To act in a polite or proper way. 

  • To act, conduct oneself in a specific manner; used with an adverbial of manner. 

mess around

verb
  • To fiddle idly. 

  • To joke, kid, or play. 

  • To have a sexual relationship, especially one which is non-commital. 

How often have the words behave and mess around occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )