BUSY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • 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

... they returned briskly, frightened at the sounds of carriages rolling in the distance. They often went out after that, and chose in preference the paths near the pond of Madrid where, behind sheltering shrubs, they sat talking and listening to the busy hum of Parisian life, seemingly so ...

— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... work in airnest—I had nothin' much in view But to drownd out rickollections—and it kep' me busy, too! But I slowly thrived and prospered, tel Mother used to say She expected yit to see me ...

— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... ghost, for after the first few days her mind wandered painfully, and his presence excited her dangerously. For weeks he vacillated between perfunctory work at the office, unsatisfactory talks with busy doctors and impatient nurses, and long apprehensive hours in what had been home. In "Little Venice," in the best powder-blue jar and the rest, he found no solace, on the contrary, the occasion of revolting suggestions. There was an imp that whispered that ...

— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather

... with the idea of a garden floating on a bed of rushes; and that is capillary attraction, which would raise particles of water, one by one, among the fibres of the rushes until the frail raft on which the earth rested was saturated; and still pressing upward, the busy drops would penetrate the superincumbent earth, moistening and adding to the specific gravity of the garden by filling the porous earth until it became too heavy to float, if it ...

— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... Railroads, long almost completely forbidden, gained free "right of way," and promised in the near future to traverse the country far and wide. Steamers ploughed their way for a thousand miles up the Yang-tse-Kiang; engineers became busy exploiting the coal and iron mines of the Flowery Kingdom; great factories, equipped with the best modern machinery, sprang up in the foreign settlements; foreign books began to be translated and read; and the empress even went so ...

— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

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