Bus

How to spell bus

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bus

What does bus mean?

1. nounA large road vehicle that carries many fare-paying passengers along a set route.
2. verbTo transport people by bus, or to clear used dishes from restaurant tables.

Bus in a sentence

• noun

  The morning bus was packed with commuters heading into the city.

• verb

  The company will bus workers to the conference centre each morning.

• noun

  She missed the last bus home and had to call a taxi.

• verb

  He earns extra money helping to bus tables at the busy diner.

Where does bus come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word is a clipped form of 'omnibus', which entered English in the early 1800s from the French 'voiture omnibus', meaning a 'carriage for all'. The French had borrowed 'omnibus' straight from Latin, where it is the dative plural of 'omnis' (all) and literally means 'for everyone', signalling a public vehicle anyone could ride. The first horse-drawn omnibus services ran in Paris in the 1820s and soon spread to London, and busy speakers quickly shortened the long word to its tail end, 'bus'. That casual clipping is why a tiny three-letter word still carries a hidden Latin grammatical ending. The same 'omnis' root survives in words such as 'omnipotent' (all-powerful) and 'omnivore' (eater of all things).

How the word is built

• bus (shortened from omnibus, Latin for 'for all', the dative plural of omnis 'all')