busses

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of bus. Buses is the more common spelling.

   City busses run every fifteen minutes during rush hour.

   Several busses were rerouted around the parade downtown.

   Note

   One spelling, two words: busses is the plural of the vehicle and also of buss, the old word for a kiss. For vehicles, buses is the more usual spelling in modern American English. Busses still turns up in print, as when the cow in Walt Kelly's Pogo (1959) finds his old line had "converted to busses." The plural serves every sense of bus, from motor coaches to the electrical conductor and the slang ambulance.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of bus.

   The company busses its workers to the plant from three pickup points.

   She busses the dirty plates as soon as the customers leave.

   Note

   Two unrelated jobs hide in this verb. The first is moving people by bus, which in the US often means sending students to a more distant school for racial integration. The second, also American, is clearing meal remains from tables. Both can take an object (she busses the plates) or stand alone (he busses at a diner). The doubled-s spelling competes with the more usual buses.

3. 3
   noun

   Plural of buss.

   The old sailor greeted his sisters with hearty busses on both cheeks.

   Their reunion ended with tears, laughter, and a flurry of busses.

   Note

   Two quite different things share this plural. One is kisses, in an archaic use of buss. The other is herring busses, the shallow-keeled Dutch boats used for herring fishing. A third use survives only as an archaic spelling for the passenger vehicle. Busses meaning kisses reads as deliberately old-fashioned, so let the surrounding words, such as cheeks or a harbor, tell the reader which plural is meant.

4. 4
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of buss.

   The fond uncle busses each niece soundly as they file out the door.

   She busses her husband goodbye on the platform before the train pulls away.

   Note

   Here the kiss is a verb, and it works with or without an object: she busses her husband, or the two simply buss. Its home is dialect and poetry, and it can be figurative as well as literal, so a breeze might buss the water. Outside those settings it sounds knowingly quaint, and kisses is the everyday choice.

Showing meanings only. Show all 4