Although they had but that moment left the school behind them, they were now in thebusy thoroughfares of a city, where shadowy passengers passed and repassed; where shadowy carts and coaches battled for the way, and all the strife and tumult of a real city were.[…]They left thebusy scene, and went into an obscure part of the town, where Scrooge had never penetrated before, although he recognised its situation, and its bad repute.
2024 September 30, Peter Eavis, “Counteroffers Exchanged in Effort to Avert U.S. Dock Strike”, inThe New York Times[1]:
With hours to go before their labor contract expired, longshoremen on the East and Gulf Coasts prepared on Monday to go on strike at midnight, halting most activity at some of thebusiest U.S. ports.
And the first thing I did was to lay by a certain quantity of provisions, being the stores for our voyage; and intended in a week or a fortnight’s time to open the dock, and launch out our boat. I wasbusy one morning upon something of this kind, when I called to Friday, and bid him to go to the sea-shore and see if he could find a turtle or a tortoise, a thing which we generally got once a week, for the sake of the eggs as well as the flesh. But to return to Friday; he was sobusy about his father that I could not find in my heart to take him off for some time; but after I thought he could leave him a little, I called him to me, and he came jumping and laughing, and pleased to the highest extreme: then I asked him if he had given his father any bread.
After walking several miles in a leisurely manner, and toobusy to know anything about it, they found at last, on examining their watches, that it was time to be at home.
His hands werebusy 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.
In fact she was sobusy 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.
1997, Douglas Rodriguez,Latin ladles:
These days, as people getbusier andbusier, many are skipping the tamale making and just cooking up this thick polentalike soup.
I will be hanged if some eternal villain, Somebusy and insinuating rogue, Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office, Have not devised this slander; I'll be hanged else.
2016, Chris Graham,Five Minutes of Amazing: My Journey Through Dementia, London:Sphere,→ISBN,page30:
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 thebusies – the police – soon afterwards for pinching a bottle of milk from a float.
