bustle

From Middle English bustlen, bustelen, bostlen, perhaps an alteration of *busklen (> Modern English buskle), a frequentative of Middle English busken (“to prepare; make ready”), from Old Norse búask (“to prepare oneself”);^[1] or alternatively from a frequentative form of Middle English busten, bisten (“to buffet; pummel; dash; beat”) +‎ -le. Compare also Icelandic bustla (“to splash; bustle”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈbʌsəl/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ʌsəl

bustle (countable and uncountable, plural bustles)

1. (countable, uncountable) An excited activity; a stir.
   • 1748, David Hume, Enquiries concerning the human understanding and concerning the principles of moral., London: Oxford University Press, published 1973, § 34:

     we are, perhaps, all the while flattering our natural indolence, which, hating the bustle of the world, and drudgery of business seeks a pretence of reason to give itself a full and uncontrolled indulgence.

   • 1755, Adam Fitz-Adam, The World, number CXXI, London, page 789:

     In the midſt of all this buſtle, I was ſtruck with the appearance of a large bevy of beauties and women of the firſt fashion, who with all the perfect confidence of good breeding, inſhrined themſelves in the ſeveral temples dedicated to the Cyprian Venus[.]

2. (computing, countable) A cover to protect and hide the back panel of a computer or other office machine.
3. (historical, countable) A frame worn underneath a woman's skirt, typically only protruding from the rear as opposed to the earlier more circular hoops.
   • 2006, Peter Godwin, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa:

     All the portraits that hang on the walls of the living room are, I realize, of my mother's family: miniatures of her great-aunts in Victorian bustles and elaborate feathered hats; a gilt-framed oil of her great-great-great-uncle as a boy in pastoral England, wearing a gold riding coat over white jodhpurs and sitting astride a white steed, a King Charles spaniel yapping at them from the foreground of the canvas.

bustle (third-person singular simple present bustles, present participle bustling, simple past and past participle bustled)

1. To move busily and energetically with fussiness (often followed by about).

   The commuters bustled about inside the train station.

   • 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition II, section 3, member 6:

     I was once so mad to bussell abroad, and seek about for preferment […].

2. To teem or abound (usually followed by with); to exhibit an energetic and active abundance (of a thing).

   The train station was bustling with commuters.

3. (transitive) To push around, to importune.
   • 1981, A. D. Hope, “His Coy Mistress to Mr. Marvell”, in A Book of Answers:

     Don’t bustle her or fuss or snatch: / A suitor looking at his watch / Is not a posture that persuades / Willing, much less reluctant maids.

• (to move busily): flit, hustle, scamper, scurry
• (to exhibit an energetic abundance): abound, brim, bristle, burst, crawl, swell, teem

• bluest, bluets, butles, sublet, subtle