busybody
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of busybody
Explanation
A busybody is a nosy, meddling person, who's very interested in what other people say and do. If you're a busybody, you can't help offering advice to friends, whether they want it or not. Busybodies are known for trying to help with situations in which they're not necessarily welcome or needed. You could describe your mom as a busybody if she asks prying questions and tries to orchestrate your romantic life. The word busybody comes from a now-obsolete meaning of busy, "prying" or "meddlesome."
Vocabulary lists containing busybody
With the Fire on High
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The Book of Unknown Americans
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"Oedipus the King" by Sophocles
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Sample playbills during one recent Peking opera week: People's Theater: Busybody Li, the story of an overeager woman on a commune.
From Time Magazine Archive
Busybody Pinkerton makes more trouble, has more excitement than usual, in a suburban poisoning case.
From Time Magazine Archive
The Busybody is always anxious after something about Somebody.
From A Lecture On Heads As Delivered By Mr. Charles Lee Lewes, To Which Is Added, An Essay On Satire, With Forty-Seven Heads By Nesbit, From Designs By Thurston, 1812 by Thurston, Katherine Cecil
In its boughs frisked and gambolled a squirrel called Busybody, which carried gossip from bough to root and back.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 15, January, 1859 by Various
An Officious Busybody, perceiving a Phœnix well alight, promptly extinguished her by means of a convenient watering-pot.
From A Bayard From Bengal Being some account of the Magnificent and Spanking Career of Chunder Bindabun Bhosh,... by Jabberjee, Hurry Bungsho
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
