adjective, verb
adjective (busier, busiest)
doing sth
1 ~ (with sth/sb) having a lot to do; perhaps not free to do sth else because you are working on sth:
Are you busy tonight? * Kate's busy with her homework. * I'm afraid the doctor is busy at the moment. Can he call you back? * I'll be too busy to come to the meeting. * The principal is a very busy woman. * She was always too busy to listen. * a very busy life
2 ~ (doing sth) spending a lot of time on sth:
James is busy practising for the school concert. * Let's get busy with the clearing up. * They were busy enjoying themselves at the party.
place
3 full of people, activity, vehicles, etc:
a busy main road * Victoria is one of London's busiest stations.
period of time
4 full of work and activity:
Have you had a busy day? * This is one of the busiest times of the year for the department. * We had a busy weekend lined up.
telephone
5 (especially AmE) being used
SYNENGAGED:
The line is busy-I'll try again later. * the busy signal
pattern / design
6 too full of small details:
This wallpaper is too busy for the bedroom.
busily adverb:
He was busily engaged repairing his bike.
IDIOMS
as busy as a bee very busy
keep yourself busy to find enough things to do:
Since she retired she's kept herself very busy.
verb (busies, busying, busied, busied) ~ yourself (with sth)
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for busy is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Does busy appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — busy appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.