[Vocabulary] Busy or Engaged?

[ngoc_lan]

I'm from Vietnam and I'm an English learner
I want to know the differences between "busy" and "engaged"
And in these 2 sentences, which one is correct?
a. the telephone line is busy
b. the telephone line is engaged
I hope to receive answers from you
Thank you very much

 

[crazYgeeK]

Hi Lan, welcome to the forums of English experts, one of the best English forums for learners from all over the world. I have found this forum much helpful and I hope you so. Please wait for the answer, maybe our teachers are being a little busy!

 

[emsr2d2]

I'm from Vietnam and I'm an English learner.
I want to know the differences between "busy" and "engaged".
In these 2 sentences, which one is correct?
a. the telephone line is busy
b. the telephone line is engaged
I hope to receive answers from you.
Thank you very much.

Hello, and welcome to the forum. You have made a very good start. Your title is relevant to your thread, you have enclosed the words you are asking about in quotation marks, and you have asked a useful question.

The simple answer is that both of them are correct. In BrE, you will hear "engaged" much more frequently. I'm sure an AmE speaker will tell you whether "busy" is heard more often there. I would like to add that we don't often say "the telephone line" - we would usually simplify it to "the line". The context or situation is normally enough to know if we are talking about a telephone line.

If you are working on reception somewhere and you take a call from someone who wishes to speak to someone else whose line is engaged, you might say "I'm sorry, his line is engaged at the moment. Would you like to hold?"

 

[riquecohen]

This AmE-speaker agrees with emsr2d2´s response in all respects. It is true that in the US you would more likely hear "the line is busy," but "engaged" is heard as well, and is widely understood.

 

[ngoc_lan]

Thank you very much. Your answers really help.