busybody
See also: busy body
English
Alternative forms
- busy body
Etymology
busy + body
Noun
busybody (plural busybodies)
- Someone who interferes with others; one who is nosy, intrusive or meddlesome.
- 1526, [William Tyndale, transl.], The Newe Testamẽt […] (Tyndale Bible), [Worms, Germany: Peter Schöffer], OCLC 762018299, 1 Peter iiij:[15], folio ccxc, verso:
- Se that none of you ſuffre as a murtherer / or as a thefe / or an evyll doar / or as a buſybody in wother mens matters.
- 1853 January, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], “Paulina”, in Villette. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder & Co., […], OCLC 81622575, page 22:
- Candidly speaking, I thought her a little busy-body; but her father, blind like other parents, seemed perfectly content to let her wait on him, and even wonderfully soothed by her offices.
- 1915, L[ucy] M[aud] Montgomery, “Love Takes Up the Glass of Time”, in Anne of the Island, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert] L[evi] Burt Company, OCLC 32428260, page 325:
- But I couldn’t—and I can’t tell you, either, what it’s meant to me these two years to believe you were going to marry him, and be told every week by some busybody that your engagement was on the point of being announced.
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Synonyms
- (one who interferes or is nosy or intrusive): marplot, meddler, kibitzer, nosy parker
Derived terms
- busybodying
- busybodyism
Translations
someone who interferes with others
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Verb
busybody (third-person singular simple present busybodies, present participle busybodying, simple past and past participle busybodied)
- (intransitive) To meddle or interfere.