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• ado
  ado

  noun

  busy activity or bustle; fuss; bother.
• ADO
  ADO

  abbreviation

  accumulated day off

ado

American  

[uh-doo] / əˈdu /

noun

1. busy activity or bustle; fuss; bother.

   Much more ado has been made over this allegation than the facts warrant.

   Synonyms:

   uproar, turmoil, noise, hubbub, excitement, confusion, commotion, to-do, flurry

   Antonyms:

   tranquility, peace, calm

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idioms

1. without further ado, without additional preamble, preliminaries, or other delay.

   Well, without further ado, let's get down to the details of our master plan.

ADO ¹ British  

abbreviation

1. accumulated day off

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ado ² British  

/ əˈduː /

noun

1. bustling activity; fuss; bother; delay (esp in the phrases without more ado, with much ado )

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Synonym Usage

Ado, to-do, commotion, stir, tumult suggest a great deal of fuss and noise. Ado implies a confused bustle of activity, a considerable emotional upset, and a great deal of talking: Much Ado About Nothing. To-do, now more commonly used, may mean merely excitement and noise and may be pleasant or unpleasant: a great to-do over a movie star. Commotion suggests a noisy confusion and babble: commotion at the scene of an accident. Stir suggests excitement and noise, with a hint of emotional cause: The report was followed by a tremendous stir in the city. Tumult suggests disorder with noise and violence: a tumult as the mob stormed the Bastille.

Etymology

Origin of ado

First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English (north) at do, a phrase equivalent to at “to” (from Old Norse, which used at with the infinitive) + do do ¹

Explanation

Someone who makes a lot of ado about things has a tendency to make them more busy or complicated than they need to be. A flurry of activity or a lot of complaining about a little problem are both examples of ado. It's an old fashioned word, dating back to the fourteenth century, when it meant "conflict or trouble." "At do" was a Norse version of the English phrase "to do," which was eventually shortened to ado. The most famous use of the word is probably in the title of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

ado ADO

For U.S. shoppers hoping for relief, however, it’s looking like much ado about nothing.

From MarketWatch ● Oct. 24, 2025

All right, without further ado, let’s get this episode started.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 29, 2025

Mark McAfee, the farmer and raw milk advocate whose Raw Farm dairy outside Fresno produced the contaminated product, told NPR in May that concerns about raw milk amounted to “much ado about zero.”

From Slate ● Dec. 4, 2024

“We suspect this is much ado about nothing,” he wrote in a note to clients.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 31, 2024

Without further ado, he leans forward, catches hold of something around the side of the stock car, and climbs nimbly to the roof.

From "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen

"ADO is like an alarm bell that rings the moment oxygen starts to fall," Matthews says.

From Science Daily ● Dec. 2, 2025

When the Women's Eredivisie was created in 2007 she landed her first full-time job as a coach at ADO Den Haag, having initially turned it down when it was offered on a semi-professional basis.

From BBC ● Jul. 6, 2022

In The Hague, high winds tore off part of the roof of soccer club ADO The Hague’s stadium.

From Seattle Times ● Feb. 18, 2022

In its ADO supplement, the ADB maintained its growth forecasts for China at 8.1% this year and 5.5% next year.

From Reuters ● Jul. 20, 2021

Sawyer agrees, but admits his priority is turning around the ADO before he can focus on any larger strategic picture.

From The Guardian ● Jun. 26, 2019