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Glite Dictionary
hive of activity

hive of activity

1 3.5
A place where many people are busy and moving
  • idiom
translation icon : un hervidero de actividad
  • His Milan workshop was a veritable hive of activity, buzzing with apprentices and students.
  • become a hive of activity

Examples

  • The market is a hive of activity: pinching, tasting, sniffing, and for the man playing the steel drums, thumping.

  • Yet, the universe is a hive of activity.

    Academic text (2000)

  • Behind him, Main Control became a buzzing hive of activity.

    Fiction book (1998)

  • As it always did when she entered this hive of activity, Annabelle's heart beat just a little faster.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • Babis' lively local hive of activity is a well-kept secret on the unsung Greek island of Kalymnos.

    Blog text (14)

  • As the Bluegrass Stakes approached, the gateway for the all-important Derby, both Three Willows and Longshot were hives of activity.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • In the area of the workshops, a hive of activity: the racket of machines, a noisy tractor sweeping everything before it, a huge truck unloading its freight.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • The intersection of Bristol Street and McFadden Avenue is a hive of activity after classes let out at nearby Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School.

Synonyms

hive
vshive of activity
32 3.9

A busy place full of people and activity

focuses more on many people doing things energetically in the place
bustle
vshive of activity
20 4.1

Busy, noisy movement in a place with many people

refers to the busy place where that activity happens rather than the action
hotspot
vshive of activity
5 3.5

A busy place popular for eating, music, and meeting people

describes a busy scene by energy and people, not by popularity or fun focus
beehive
vshive of activity
  • Informal
4 3.3

A busy place where many people work quickly, like a hospital

applies more broadly to any place with energetic crowd movement not only work

Antonyms

quiet
45 1.0

A calm time with little or no sound

deserted
1 3.0

A place that people no longer live in or use

How Busy

hive of activity
1 3.5
beehive
  • Informal
4 3.3
corner
184 4.2

Surface Forms

hive of activity singular
hives of activity plural

Morphology

hive + of + activity

The phrase maps directly from the literal image of a beehive as a place teeming with activity: combining 'hive' (a busy place) with 'activity' straightforwardly yields 'a very busy place.' This simple, concrete metaphor is widely comprehensible and follows normal noun + of + noun composition, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words can infer the meaning.

Etymology

Hive of activity comes from the image of a bee hive, where many bees move and work together. That busy picture is used to describe places full of people and action, so it means 'a place that is very busy'.