View source for Bus - buss

Most students know about '''buses''' as public motor transport. Few, if any, will write it in the old-fashioned way, which betrays its [[etymology]]: ''''bus'''. This is the abbreviated, colloquial form of a [[Latin]] word ''omnibus'', 'for all'.
*There are also three [[homophone]]s of '''bus''', rwo [[verb]]s and two [[noun]]s. All are more or less archaic, and written '''buss'''. , with two '-s-'s. The [[plural]]s of the nouns, and the [[3rd person]] [[singular]] of the verbs, are all written '''busses'''. This distinguishes their spelling from that of the modern [motor-] '''buses'''.
**Students of [[Shakespeare]] and other Early Modern writers will find the form '''buss''' meaning 'a kiss [particularly a demonstrative and noisy one]'. [[Falstaff]] says, in [[Shakespeare]]'s ''Henry IV, part 2'' to his paramour Doll Tearsheet, "Thou dost give me flattering busses", to which she replies "By my troth, I kiss thee with a most constant heart" (II iv 333). The [[verb]] 'to '''buss'''<nowiki>'</nowiki> means 'to kiss in that fashion'.
**Students of marine history may come across '''buss''' as the name of a type of vessel: from the fourteenth century, a large cargo ship designed for heavy loads; from the sixteenth century, increasingly used for a two- or three-masted fishing-boat used mostly to catch herring. (It was sometimes called a '''herring-buss'''.) 
**A second [[verb]] 'to '''buss'''<nowiki>'</nowiki>, a spelling variant of an equally archaic '''busk''' meaning 'to prepare or equip [oneself]', 'to dress or ornament', became used for 'to tie a [fishing] fly or hook', and recently only some festivals of 'riding the bounds' of some towns in the Scottish borders, where the flags are '''bussed''' with ribbons - that is, they have ribbons tied on them for the bonny show.

[[Category:homophones]]
[[Category:archaic English]]
[[Category:English Literature]]
[[Category:etymology]]
[[Category:disambig]]