The phrase "merely around" is correct and can be used in written English.
You can use it to emphasize the idea of something being limited or restricted in a certain area. For example, "He is merely around the corner, so we should be able to catch him before he leaves."
The message behind reclaiming Dec 1st as World HIV Day is not merely around the change of letters, but around who sits at that table and who needs to participate.
The Yankees merely pitched around Jason Giambi in the first round, but they cannot do this against the Mariners.
The elimination of tonality, and, with it, the bass lines on which tonality rests, might result in an art that consisted entirely of "merely playing around".
He said in his letters that the bass line of a given theme is "sacred," is the "firm footing on which I then build my tales," and that variation itself is "merely playing around".
Others merely hang around looking unusual; the yeti and Nessie just lurk; the Leviathan lurks, too, largerly; the record is mixed on giants, which in some accounts live on clouds but in most are just enormous and crabby.
But they also persuaded a jury that he was not, as he argued, merely standing around, talking religion — that he had, as Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, put it, a "position in Al Qaeda's homicidal hierarchy" — and was involved enough in Al Qaeda's plans for the future to merit a conspiracy conviction.
Or maybe one day you're merely cleaning around the house, when out of nowhere comes your Roomba flying at you at breakneck speed.
And it'll have to be more than merely switching around their color.
Curley denied that the assistant had reported anything of a sexual nature, calling it "merely 'horsing around,'" the 23-page grand jury report said.
