to bust on
- phrasal verb
- /bʌst ɒn/
- Informal
- And that's why I busted on your lecture, so I could meet you...
You know, I had some pretty good acoustic guitar intros myself and smiles and I thought, Oh my God, Joanie's totally busting on me.
- You know, I had some pretty good acoustic guitar intros myself and smiles and I thought, Oh my God, Joanie's totally busting on me.
Examples
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At the party, they spent the night busting on their friend's dance moves.
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So, we're supposed to go in there, bust on this punk
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You wanna bust on someone, find yourself a husband to bust on
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You wanna bust on someone, find yourself a husband to bust on
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- I was just busting on you.
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I probably would've busted on you, too.
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The bust on Chrystie, right?
Fiction book (1999) -
We love to bust on each other during our game nights.
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Whenever we hang out, we always bust on each other's silly habits.
Synonyms
To tease someone in a friendly, playful way
To make jokes about someone to make them look silly
To make jokes about someone, sometimes to be playful and sometimes to be unkind
To make a short teasing or critical comment about someone
To tease or criticize someone in a friendly way
To tease someone in a playful or annoying way
To tease someone in a friendly, joking way
To laugh at someone and say unkind things about them
To joke or tease someone in a friendly way
To tease someone by making jokes about them in a friendly way
To tease or nag someone, often in a playful way
To tell someone something that is not true to make them laugh
To tease or nag someone in a way that annoys them
To make fun of someone in a playful way
Antonyms
How Teasing
- Offensive
- Informal
- Informal
- Informal
Surface Forms
Morphology
bust + on
The sense 'to criticize or tease' is slang/idiomatic and not a straightforward composition of 'bust' (commonly 'break' or 'arrest') + 'on' (a preposition/particle). While related idiomatic patterns exist (e.g. 'bust someone's chops'), the teasing meaning is not transparently derivable from the literal constituents, so a B1 learner who only knows the words would likely not predict it.
Etymology
Bust on may come from older informal phrases like bust someone's chops, where bust meant a playful 'hit' and on showed the action aimed at a person. Imagine someone lightly 'hitting' another with teasing words. That's why bust on means 'to tease or criticize playfully'.