Busy Wait
Noun · Slang & Abbreviations
Definitions
A wait implemented by repeatedly checking a condition instead of sleeping or yielding efficiently, often used casually to describe wasteful polling. In engineering slang, calling something a busy wait usually means it is chewing resources while pretending to be simple.
In plain English: A wasteful wait loop that keeps checking instead of pausing efficiently.
Example: "The CPU spike came from a hidden busy wait in the retry loop, which kept spinning thousands of times a second while the dependency stayed unavailable."