busy
Syllables: bus·y/ˈbɪz.i/
busy adjective: crowded with business or activities; having a great deal going on.
Adjective
busy (comparative busier, superlative busiest)
- Crowded with business or activities; having a great deal going on.
- Be careful crossing that busy street.
- To-morrow is a busy day.c. 1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Richard the Third: […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
- Engaged with or preoccupied by an activity or person.
- The director cannot see you now: he's busy.
- Her telephone has been busy all day.
- Having much work to do; having much to get done.
- Near-synonym: swamped
- Finding the time to work out and cook healthy meals is easily pushed to the wayside in our ordinary, busy lives.2015 June 19, Jennifer Cohen, “Always busy? 8 ways to stay fit”, in CNN, archived from the original on 15 Aug 2025
- Synonyms:
- swamped
- Having a lot going on; complicated or intricate.
- Flowers, stripes, and checks in the same fabric make for a busy pattern.
- Officious; meddling.
- 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.c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...
- I will be hanged if some eternal villain,
Noun
busy (plural busies)
- A police officer.
- I remember playing on a building site once and coming across a five-pound note. I could hardly believe it when I spotted it poking out of the rubble. Excitedly, I ran straight home and gave it to my mum. I was hero of the hour until I got into trouble with the busies – the police – soon afterwards...2016, Chris Graham, Five Minutes of Amazing: My Journey Through Dementia, London: Sphere, →ISBN, page 30
Verb
busy (third-person singular simple present busies, present participle busying, simple past and past participle busied)
- To make somebody busy or active; to occupy.
- On my vacation I'll busy myself with gardening.
- The work busied me all afternoon.
busy meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
busy in Hindi
- crowded with business or activities
- व्यस्त vyast
- doing a great deal
- व्यस्त vyast, मसरूफ़ masrūf, मशग़ूल maśġūl
- engaged or preoccupied
- व्यस्त vyast
busy in Tamil
- சுறுசுறுப்பான, ஓய்வின்றி, பரபரப்பான, செயல்நிலை, அலுவல், அகாலி
busy in Marathi
- व्यग्र, व्यस्त
busy in Urdu
- doing a great deal
- مصروف masrūf, مشغول maśġūl
More languagesFewer languages
- busy in Bengali
- মশগুল mośgul
- busy in Telugu
- బిజీగా ఉన్నారు, బిజీగా ఉంది, బిజీగా
- busy in Malayalam
- ഉത്സാഹിയായ, ഏകാഗ്രതയോടെ, മുഷിഞ്ഞു പ്രവർത്തിക്കുക, കാര്യബഹുലമായ
- busy in Kannada
- ಕ್ರಿಯಾಶೀಲನಾಗು, ಕೆಲಸದಲ್ಲಿ ತೊಡಗು, ಕಾರ್ಯಮಗ್ನ, ಕಾರ್ಯೋದ್ಯುಕ್ತ
- busy in Punjabi
- مشغول maśġūl, ਵਿਅਸਤ viasat, وئست vyast
- busy in Gujarati
- વ્યસ્ત
- busy in Odia
- ବ୍ଯ଼ସ୍ତ, ବ୍ଯ଼ସ୍ତବହୁଳ
- busy in Nepali
- व्यस्त
- busy in Pashto
- بوخت buxt, اخته axta
- busy in Tagalog
- okupado
- busy in Arabic
- مَشْغُول mašḡūl
- busy in Malay
- ramai, sibuk
- busy in Indonesian
- sibuk, ramai
- busy in Persian
- شلوغ šoluġ, مشغول mašġul
- busy in Thai
- ยุ่ง yûng
- busy in Vietnamese
- bận, bận rộn
Examples of busy in a sentence
- He is busy with piano practice.
- Ramzi is busy getting ready for meetings.
- Go away, I’m busy sleeping!
- 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.1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], Pride and Prejudice: […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [George Sidney] for...
- 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.1843 December 19, Charles Dickens, “(please specify the page number)”, in A Christmas Carol. […], London: Chapman & Hall, […], →OCLC:
- 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.1967, Barbara Sleigh, Jessamy, Sevenoaks, Kent: Bloomsbury, published 1993, →ISBN, page 18:
Synonyms of busy
Forms of busy
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | busier |
| superlative | busiest |
| alternative form (obsolete) | busie |
| Noun | |
| plural | busies |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | busies |
| present participle | busying |
| past participle | busied |
| past | busied |
Origin of busy
From Middle English bisy, busie, from Old English bisiġ (“busy, occupied, diligent”), from Proto-West Germanic *bisīg (“diligent; zealous; busy”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian biesich (“active, diligent, hard-working, industrious”), Dutch bezig (“busy”), Low German besig (“busy”). The spelling with ⟨u⟩ represents the pronunciation of the West Midland and Southern dialects while the Modern English pronunciation with /ɪ/ is from the dialects of the East Midlands.
From Middle English bisien, from Old English bisgian (“to occupy, employ, trouble, afflict”), from Proto-West Germanic *bisīgōn. Cognate with Old Frisian bisgia (“to use”).
Words formed from busy
- bebusy
- busy around
- forebusy
- overbusy
- unbusy
- busihead
- busily
- business
- busy as a beaver
- busy as a bee
- busy as a dyke in a hardware store
- busy as a nailer
- busy as a one-armed paperhanger
- busy as a one-armed paper hanger
- busy beaver
- busy beaver function
- busy bee
- busy belt
- busy board
- busy body
- busybody
- busy book
- busy box
- busyish
- busy little beaver
- busy loop
- busy-ness
- busyness
- busy signal
- busy wait
- busy-work
- busy work
- embusy
- ever-busy
- fast busy signal
- get busy
- I'm busy
- keep someone busy
- nonbusy
- semibusy
- superbusy
- the line is busy
- underbusy
- Wheal Busy
Phrases with busy
- got busy
- busy bees
- gets busy
- busy books
- busy boxes
- busy loops
- busy waits
- busy boards
- busy bodies
- Busy Lizzie
- gotten busy
- busy beavers
5 more phrasesFewer phrases
Words that rhyme with busy
Questions about busy
- What does busy mean?
- Busy means crowded with business or activities; having a great deal going on.
- What is busy in Hindi?
- Busy in Hindi is व्यस्त (vyast), मसरूफ़ (masrūf), मशग़ूल (maśġūl). See Busy meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use busy in a sentence?
- He is busy with piano practice.
- What part of speech is busy?
- Busy can be an adjective, a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce busy?
- Busy is pronounced /ˈbɪz.i/.
Words near busy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: busy (page history and authors); busy (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); busy (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); busy (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); busy (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); busy (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); مشغول (Punjabi) (page history and authors); busy (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); busy (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); busy (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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: en-us-busy.ogg, En-uk-busy.ogg.
Cite this entry: “busy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/busy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.