lallygag vs mess about

lallygag

verb
  • To dawdle; to be lazy or idle; to avoid necessary work or effort. 

noun
  • Horseplay, fooling around. 

  • A layabout, one who lallygags. 

mess about

verb
  • To play with; to toy with; to waste the time of (a person). 

  • To misbehave 

  • To be in a casual non-committal relationship 

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