Word.ws English Dictionary

busy work

busy work noun: work or activity performed with the intention or result of occupying time, and not necessarily to accomplish something productive; routine work of low priority undertaken for the sake of avoiding idleness.

Noun

busy work (uncountable)

  1. (US, idiomatic) Work or activity performed with the intention or result of occupying time, and not necessarily to accomplish something productive; routine work of low priority undertaken for the sake of avoiding idleness.
    • Until we have a system clearly established, entering more data is just busy work.

Forms of busy work

alternative formbusywork
alternative formbusy-work

Questions about busy work

What does busy work mean?
Busy work means work or activity performed with the intention or result of occupying time, and not necessarily to accomplish something productive; routine work of low priority undertaken for the sake of avoiding idleness.
What part of speech is busy work?
Busy work is a noun.

Words near busy work in the dictionary

  1. busy loops
  2. busy signal
  3. busy signals
  4. busy wait
  5. busy waits
  6. busy work
  7. busy-ness
  8. busy-work
  9. busybodied
  10. busybodies
  11. busybodiness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: busy work (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-busy work.ogg.

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