Contextualizebeta

busy

adj
/ˈbɪz.i/

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.

  1. inherited from *bisīg✻ — “diligent; zealous; busy”
  2. inherited from bisiġ — “busy, occupied, diligent”
  3. inherited from bisy

Definitions

  1. Crowded with business or activities

    Crowded with business or activities; having a great deal going on.

    • Be careful crossing that busy street.
    • To-morrow is a busy day.

  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.

  3. Having much work to do

    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. ›+ 4 more definitions

    1. Having a lot going on

      Having a lot going on; complicated or intricate.

      • Flowers, stripes, and checks in the same fabric make for a busy pattern.

    2. Officious

      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.

    3. A police officer.

    4. To make somebody busy or active

      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.

The neighborhood

Derived

busihead, busily, business, busy as a beaver, busy as a bee, busy as a dyke in a hardware store, busy as a nailer, busy as a one-armed paperhanger, busy as a one-armed paper hanger, busy beaver, busy beaver function, busy bee, busy board, busybody, busy body, busy book, busy box, busyish, busy little beaver, busy loop, busyness, busy-ness, busy signal, busy wait, busy work, busy-work, embusy, ever-busy, fast busy signal, get busy, I'm busy, keep someone busy, nonbusy, semibusy, superbusy, the line is busy, underbusy, Wheal Busy

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at busy. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01busy02preoccupied03available04readily05impediment06army07charge08combatants09combatant10engaged

A definitional loop anchored at busy. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

10 hops · closes at busy

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA