Bustle

Definitions

1. An excited activity; a stir.
   countable, uncountable
2. A surname from German.
3. A cover to protect and hide the back panel of a computer or other office machine.
   countable
4. A frame worn underneath a woman's skirt, typically only protruding from the rear as opposed to the earlier more circular hoops.
   countable, historical
5. Money; cash.
   UK, obsolete, slang, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“the whirl and bustle of a large metropolis”

“we are, perhaps, all the while flattering our natural indolence, which, hating the bustle of the world, and drudgery of business seeks a pretence of reason⟳ to give⟳ itself a full and uncontrolled indulgence.”

“In the midſt of all this buſtle, I was ſtruck with the appearance of a large bevy of beauties and women of the firſt fashion, who with all the perfect confidence of good breeding, inſhrined themſelves in the ſeveral temples dedicated to the Cyprian Venus[.]”

“All the portraits that hang⟳ on the walls of the living room are, I realize⟳, of my mother's family: miniatures of her great-aunts in Victorian bustles and elaborate feathered hats; a gilt-framed oil of her great-great-great-uncle as a boy in pastoral England, wearing a gold riding coat over white jodhpurs and sitting astride a white steed, a King Charles spaniel yapping at them from the foreground of the canvas.”

“Why the old clerical's turned coper—a new way of raising the wind——letting his friends down easy—gave you a good dinner, I suppose⟳, Sir John, and took this method of drawing the bustle for it: an old trick⟳ of the reverend's.”

CEFR level