BUSY • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Busy

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/bˈɪzi/ Listen

adjective

Busy adj.

Engaged in some business; hard at work (either habitually or only for the time being); occupied with serious affairs; not idle nor at leisure; as, a busy merchant. "Sir, my mistress sends you word That she is busy, and she can not come."

Constantly at work; diligent; active. "Busy hammers closing rivets up." "Religious motives... are so busy in the heart."

Crowded with business or activities; said of places and times; as, a busy street. "To-morrow is a busy day."

Officious; meddling; foolish active. "On meddling monkey, or on busy ape."

Careful; anxious. (Obs.)

Synonyms: Diligent; industrious; assiduous; active; occupied; engaged.

verb

Busy v. t. (past & past part. busied; pres. part. busying) To make or keep busy; to employ; to engage or keep engaged; to occupy; as, to busy one's self with books. "Be it thy course to busy giddy minds With foreign quarrels."

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Etymology of 'Busy'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Busy" Quotes from Famous Books

... stood two days after his car had made its public appearance, and Bones sat confronting the busy pages of his ...

— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... of nine every weekday morning Aunt Frances dropped whatever else she was doing, took Elizabeth Ann's little, thin, white hand protectingly in hers, and led her through the busy streets to the big brick school-building where the little girl had always gone to school. It was four stories high, and when all the classes were in session there were six hundred children under that one roof. You ...

— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield

... Winthrop and his colleagues in relations with numerous persons destined to act busy parts in the stirring times that were approaching—with Brereton and Hewson, afterward two of the Parliamentary major-generals; with Philip Nye, who helped Sir Henry Vane to "cozen" the Scottish Presbyterian Commissioners in the phraseology of the ...

— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562--1733 • Various

... (q. v.), with whom he co-operated in founding the Secession Church; his sermons and religious poems, called "Gospel Sonnets," were widely read; one of the first of the Scotch seceders, strange to contemplate, "a long, soft, poke-shaped face, with busy anxious black eyes, looking as if he could not help it; and then such a character and form of human existence, conscience living to the finger ends of him, in a strange, venerable, though highly questionable manner ... his formulas casing him all round like the ...

— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... time. My back hair and the pricking of my thumbs warn me that your dearly beloved spooks are combining to put up some sort of a spooking job on us. I hope Yee Kee has a plentiful supply of joss-sticks to stand 'em off, if they get too busy ...

— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

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