busy
pronunciation
How to pronounce busy in British English:
UK [ˈbɪzi]
How to pronounce busy in American English:
US [ˈbɪzi]
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- Verb:
- keep busy with
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- Adjective:
- actively or fully engaged or occupied
- overcrowded or cluttered with detail
- intrusive in a meddling or offensive manner
- crowdedwith or characterized by much activity
- (of facilities such as telephones or lavatories) unavailable for use by anyone else or indicating unavailability; (`engaged' is a British term for a busy telephone line)
Word Origin
- busy
- busy: [OE] Busy goes back to an Old English bisig, which also meant ‘occupied’. Apart from Dutch bezig, it has no apparent relatives in any Indo-European language, and it is not known where it came from. The sense ‘inquisitive’, from which we get busybody [16], developed in the late 14th century. Business was originally simply a derivative formed from busy by adding the suffix -ness.In Old English it meant ‘anxiety, uneasiness’, reflecting a sense not recorded for the adjective itself until the 14th century. The modern commercial sense seems to have originated in the 15th century. (The modern formation busyness, reflecting the fact that business can no longer be used simply for the ‘state of being busy’, is 19th-century.)=> pidgin
- busy (adj.)
- Old English bisig "careful, anxious," later "continually employed or occupied," cognate with Old Dutch bezich, Low German besig; no known connection with any other Germanic or Indo-European language. Still pronounced as in Middle English, but for some unclear reason the spelling shifted to -u- in 15c. The notion of "anxiousness" has drained from the word since Middle English. Often in a bad sense in early Modern English, "prying, meddlesome" (preserved in busybody). The word was a euphemism for "sexually active" in 17c. Of telephone lines, 1893. Of display work, "excessively detailed, visually cluttered," 1903.
- busy (v.)
- late Old English bisgian, from busy (adj.). Related: Busied; busying.
Antonym
Example
- 1. This has been a busy summer for the french police .
- 2. New york state is busy playing catch-up .
- 3. The center of our galaxy is a busy place .
- 4. Yes , processed food , even the worst stuff , can have a role in our busy lives .
- 5. In its busy days , thurber was a coal town .