buses

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of bus.

   Two buses collided near the bridge during rush hour.

   Tourists crowded onto the buses heading downtown.

   Note

   One spelling serves every kind of bus: vehicles on the road, the long-distance coaches that North Americans also call buses, the shared conductors that link circuits in electronics, and the warhead carriers of a MIRV missile. The -es ending follows the rule for nouns that end in a hissing -s, as in gases and lenses. The doubled spelling busses also turns up, but buses is the standard form.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of bus.

   The district buses students across town to balance class sizes.

   He buses tables at the diner on weekends.

   Note

   Here the same form does very different jobs depending on what follows it. With passengers as its object, it means carrying them by bus. In American usage, a district that buses students may be sending them to a distant school for racial integration. Without an object, it means traveling by bus, or, in a US restaurant, working as a busboy. "He buses tables" means he clears them. The spelling matches the plural noun.

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