Bustle Meaning
/ˈbʌsəl/Definition, CEFR level C1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
nounAn excited activity; a stir.
nounA cover to protect and hide the back panel of a computer or other office machine.
Sentence Examples
Only my seat is cut off from that bustle.
Bustle up, you boys!
CEFR Practice Quiz
The morning ____ of the city made it hard to walk slowly on the sidewalk.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
I love the ____ of the city market on a busy Saturday morning city.
Word Origin & History
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”); or alternatively from a frequentative form of Middle English busten, bisten (“to buffet; pummel; dash; beat”) + -le. Compare also Icelandic bustla (“to splash; bustle”).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"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."
— 1748, David Hume, Enquiries concerning the human understanding and concerning the principles of moral., London: Oxford University Press, published 1973, § 34:
"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[.]"
— 1755, Adam Fitz-Adam, The World, number CXXI, London, page 789:
"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."
— 2006, Peter Godwin, When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa:
"Why the old clerical's turned coper—a new way of raising the wind——letting his friends down easy—gave you a good dinner, I suppose, Sir John, and took this method of drawing the bustle for it: an old trick of the reverend's."
— 1825, Charles Molloy Westmacott, The English Spy, page 236:
"I was once so mad to bussell abroad, and seek about for preferment […]."
— 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:
Explore More C1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The morning ____ of the city made it hard to walk slowly on the sidewalk.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
I love the ____ of the city market on a busy Saturday morning city.