Word.ws English Dictionary

bustling

/ˈbʌs(ə)lɪŋ/

bustling adjective: busy; full of energy and noisy activity. Also the present participle and gerund of bustle.

Adjective

bustling (comparative more bustling, superlative most bustling)

  1. Busy; full of energy and noisy activity.
    • bustling marketplace
    • bustling square
    Synonyms:
    lively, seething

Noun

bustling (plural bustlings)

  1. A bustle; a busy stir.
    • the bustlings of waiters in the crowded restaurant

Also used as

bustling is also the present participle and gerund of bustle.

Examples of bustling in a sentence

  • The quiet library was an island of tranquility in the noisy, bustling city.
  • The train station was bustling with commuters.
  • Many commuters travel daily between the Illinois suburbs and Northwest Indiana, making the Illiana area a bustling, interconnected community.

All 26 example sentences with bustling

Synonyms of bustling

Forms of bustling

Adjective
comparativemore bustling
superlativemost bustling
Noun
pluralbustlings

Words formed from bustling

Questions about bustling

What does bustling mean?
Bustling means busy; full of energy and noisy activity.
What part of speech is bustling?
Bustling can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce bustling?
Bustling is pronounced /ˈbʌs(ə)lɪŋ/.

Words near bustling in the dictionary

  1. bustlesome
  2. bustleth
  3. bustlike
  4. bustline
  5. bustlines
  6. bustling
  7. bustlingly
  8. bustlings
  9. bustluscious
  10. bustly
  11. busto

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bustling (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-bustling.wav.

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