Meaning of busy | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Crowded with business or activities; having a great deal going on.
2. Busy, occupied.
3. Engaged with or preoccupied by an activity or person.
4. Having much work to do; having much to get done.
5. Having a lot going on; complicated or intricate.
6. Officious; meddling.

Equivalents

Examples

“Be careful crossing that busy street.”

“To-morrow is a busy day.”

“Although they had but that moment left the school behind them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of a city, where shadowy passengers passed and repassed; where shadowy carts and coaches battled for the way, and all the strife and tumult of a real city were.[…]They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part of the town, where Scrooge had never penetrated before, although he recognised its situation, and its bad repute.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Go away, I’m busy sleeping!”

“And the first thing I did was to lay by a certain quantity of provisions, being the stores for our voyage; and intended in a week or a fortnight’s time to open the dock, and launch out our boat. I was busy one morning upon something of this kind, when I called to Friday, and bid him to go to the sea-shore and see if he could find a turtle or a tortoise, a thing which we generally got once a week, for the sake of the eggs as well as the flesh. But to return to Friday; he was so busy about his father that I could not find in my heart to take him off for some time; but after I thought he could leave him a little, I called him to me, and he came jumping and laughing, and pleased to the highest extreme: then I asked him if he had given his father any bread.”

“After walking several miles in a leisurely manner, and too busy to know anything about it, they found at last, on examining their watches, that it was time to be at home.”

“His hands were busy with his garments all this time; turning them inside out, putting them on upside down, tearing them, mislaying them, making them parties to every kind of extravagance.”

“In fact she was so busy doing all the things that anyone might, who finds themselves alone in an empty house, that she did not notice at first when it began to turn dusk and the rooms to grow dim.”

“These days, as people get busier and busier, many are skipping the tamale making and just cooking up this thick polentalike soup.”

“It may get even busier in town when a sleek train service called the Brightline debuts this summer, shuttling travelers between nearby West Palm Beach and Miami.”

“Near-synonym: swamped”

“Finding the time to work out and cook healthy meals is easily pushed to the wayside in our ordinary, busy lives.”

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

“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.”

CEFR level