bebusy

English

Etymology

From be- +‎ busy.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bɪˈbɪzi/

Verb

bebusy (third-person singular simple present bebusies, present participle bebusying, simple past and past participle bebusied)

1. (intransitive or reflexive, rare) To make or be busy; occupy.
   • 1613 [1580], Michel de Montaigne, quoting Seneca the Younger, “Vpon some verses of Virgill”, in John Florio, transl., Essays Written in French by Michael Lord of Montaigne […], page 490:

     The whole composition or text is manly, they are not bebusied about Rhetorike flowers.

   • 1811, Robert Bailey Thomas, The Farmer’s Almanack […], May 1814, Farmer’s Calendar:

     There is no time in this month to be spent in idleness. Prudent husbandmen will bebusy and suffer none of their domestics to lounge away their hours as though time was made for sluggards only.

   • 1914, H. Roswell Hawley, “Sophomore Year”, in George Washington Patterson, editor, History of the Class of Nineteen-Hundred and Fourteen, Yale College, volume 1, pages 25–26:

     To continue: the unrated, as distinguished from the unruly, bebusied themselves with furbishing the barren abodes of Durfee, Farnam and Lawrance.