TIED UP

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does tied up mean? 

• TIED UP (adjective)
  The adjective TIED UP has 1 sense:

1. kept occupied or engaged

  Familiarity information: TIED UP used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TIED UP (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Kept occupied or engaged

Context example:

the phone was tied up for almost an hour

Similar:

busy (actively or fully engaged or occupied)

 Context examples 

There I found my blessed darling stopping her ears behind the door, with her dear little face against the wall; and Jip in the plate-warmer with his head tied up in a towel.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

He came back by Wells Fargo Express, was tied up three days, and was loosed on the fourth and lost.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

The coastguard said the man must have tied up his own hands, fastening the knots with his teeth.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

In the same way his other articles were tied up with the other leading San Francisco papers.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

"I said 'pleasant people', you know," and Meg carefully tied up her shoe as she spoke, so that no one saw her face.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

The Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow are destroyed, and the Lion is tied up in your yard.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

They were small men, wiry, active, and well-built, with lank black hair tied up in a bunch behind their heads with a leathern thong, and leathern also were their loin-clothes.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I could see that it was already a third full of bundles of paper tied up with red tape into separate packages.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Then he pushed him in head first, tied up the sack, and soon swung up the searcher after wisdom dangling in the air.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Add to this that Gray, the new man, had his face tied up in a bandage for a cut he had got in breaking away from the mutineers and that poor old Tom Redruth, still unburied, lay along the wall, stiff and stark, under the Union Jack.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)