Talk:bebusy

RFV discussion: December 2022–March 2023

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bebusy

Sole sense: "to occupy" syn. busy

Of the three purported cites, the one from Jane Eyre is spurious, another was from a source not durably archived (not well formatted, commented out). It is a bad sign that Wiktionary is the only OneLook dictionary that has the term. As one might expect, there are many space-eliminating scannos for three of the forms of be busy as well as column-conflating scannos for all four forms. DCDuring (talk) 15:11, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Hard to search for, due to the closeness between bebusy and be busy. bebusied (ppt/adj) is easily found in GBooks with the meaning of "occupied". I found nothing for bebusying and bebusies/bebusieth/bebusiest. Leasnam (talk) 17:33, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Most of the cites for bebusied are from the same author, or mentions. I'll take a closer look today and see what I can make of this. Leasnam (talk) 17:56, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

I've added a cite for bebusy dated 1811. This is going to be controversial, as one could argue it's be busy but the text shows bebusy (one word) (?). I've included the page url in the cite. How do we all feel about this one ? (I know it's a stretch...) Leasnam (talk) 19:07, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

The definition says bebusy is transitive: it can't be in that quote unless it means "bebusy […] their domestics to lounge away their hours", which seems self-contradictory. Would be inclined to treat this as a typographic error. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 11:54, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

The first edition of Jane Eyre clearly has "be busy" [1]; I've removed that cite. As for the 1811 one, it's not totally clear whether the husbandmen are to be busy or the domestics are to be bebusied... This, that and the other (talk) 01:59, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

It says it's transitive but neither the 1811 nor the 1893 citation is transitive. Equinox ◑ 07:40, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Fixed. Leasnam (talk) 22:40, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

How does conflating intransitive, transitive, and reflexive "fix" anything? DCDuring (talk) 23:24, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Why does it have to be "conflating" ? - it's not conflating but including. It can be any one of the three. Leasnam (talk) 16:25, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Will the definition be substitutable in all three syntaxes. DCDuring (talk) 16:56, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

gain-fixed Leasnam (talk) 16:20, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

 Cited, looks good to me. Ioaxxere (talk) 07:04, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

RFV Passed. Ioaxxere (talk) 19:11, 3 March 2023 (UTC)