busy
adjectivenounverbtop 1 000 in film dialogue
- //ˈbɪz.i//
Crowded with business or activities; having a great deal going on.
adjective
- 1
Crowded with business or activities; having a great deal going on.
Be careful crossing that busy street.
To-morrow is a busy day.
With hours to go before their labor contract expired, longshoremen on the East and Gulf Coasts prepared on Monday to go on strike at midnight, halting most activity at some of the busiest U.S. ports.
- 2
Engaged with or preoccupied by an activity or person.
The director cannot see you now: he's busy.
Her telephone has been busy all day.
He is busy with piano practice.
Ramzi is busy getting ready for meetings.
- 3
Having much work to do; having much to get done.
Near-synonym: swamped
Finding the time to work out and cook healthy meals is easily pushed to the wayside in our ordinary, busy lives.
- 4
Having a lot going on; complicated or intricate.
Flowers, stripes, and checks in the same fabric make for a busy pattern.
- 5
Officious; meddling.
I will be hanged if some eternal villain, Some busy and insinuating rogue, Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office, Have not devised this slander; I'll be hanged else.
Etymology
From Middle English bisy, busie, from Old English bisiġ (“busy, occupied, diligent”), from Proto-West Germanic *bisīg (“diligent; zealous; busy”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian biesich (“active, diligent, hard-working, industrious”), Dutch bezig (“busy”), Low German besig (“busy”). The spelling with ⟨u⟩ represents the pronunciation of the West Midland and Southern dialects while the Modern English pronunciation with /ɪ/ is from the dialects of the East Midlands.
noun
- 1
slangA police officer.
I remember playing on a building site once and coming across a five-pound note. I could hardly believe it when I spotted it poking out of the rubble. Excitedly, I ran straight home and gave it to my mum. I was hero of the hour until I got into trouble with the busies – the police – soon afterwards for pinching a bottle of milk from a float.
verb
- 1
To make somebody busy or active; to occupy.
On my vacation I'll busy myself with gardening.
The work busied me all afternoon.
They busied themselves with the tea.
And while his fellow musicians spent their evenings smoking marijuana, Alan Greenspan busied himself by swotting up on economics and doing the band's accounts.
Etymology
From Middle English bisien, from Old English bisgian (“to occupy, employ, trouble, afflict”), from Proto-West Germanic *bisīgōn. Cognate with Old Frisian bisgia (“to use”).
Forms
- plural
- busies
- comparative
- busier
- superlative
- busiest
- past tense
- busied
- past participle
- busied
- present participle
- busying
- third person singular
- busies
busy · Crowded with business or activities; having a great deal going on.
but · Apart from, except (for), excluding.But · A surname.but- · Denotes the presence of four carbon atoms in the parent chain…