busy as a bee
1
3.4
- idiom
- Informal
:
ocupado como una abeja
- Busy as a bee, bated breath, clean as a whistle, few and far between, wild and woolly, last but not least, many and various, as luck would have it, each and every, rained like cats and dogs, any way, shape, or form, avoid like the plague.
Examples
-
Terri, Susan, and I are busy as bees... (even though this pic doesn't tell "that" story...).
Blog text (19) -
"Busy as a bee, that's how she looks with all this running around.
Fiction book (1999) -
On the contrary, they have been busy as bees dissecting the potentialities of Grutter and planning their next steps.
Academic text (2003) -
During the busy season, the workers are busy as bees completing orders on time.
-
She was busy as a bee preparing for the big event next week.
-
Throughout the day, he was busy as a bee, handling numerous tasks and meetings.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
Full of activity with many things to do
78
1.1
Putting a lot of effort into work or study
37
3.6
To work carefully and try hard to finish tasks
1
4.4
You have too much work and not enough time
Full of busy activity like a beehive
Busy doing something and not free to do other things
Antonyms
How Busy
Surface Forms
Morphology
The simile compares a person to a bee, and because bees are widely known as industrious, a B1 learner who knows 'busy', 'as', 'a' and 'bee' can readily infer the meaning 'very busy/industrious'. This straightforward, culturally common comparison follows normal compositional and comparative patterns, so the expression is transparent.
Etymology
Busy as a bee comes from the image of a bee always working in a hive, flying to flowers and bringing back food. So, the phrase means 'extremely busy' or 'working hard'.