Word.ws English Dictionary

buss

/bʌs/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Northern England/bʊs/

buss noun: a kiss. Also the archaic form of bus.

Noun (1)

buss (plural busses)

  1. (archaic) A kiss.
    • Here he gave Jones a hearty buss, shook him by the hand, and took his leave.1749, Henry Fielding, chapter XIII, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, book VII

Verb (1)

buss (third-person singular simple present busses, present participle bussing, simple past and past participle bussed)

  1. (dialectal, often, poetic, transitive) To kiss (either literally or figuratively).
    • I will thinke thou smil'st, And busse thee as thy wife.c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
    • 'I take the privilege, Mistress Ruth, of saluting you.' ...And therewith I bussed her well.1869, Richard Blackmore, Lorna Doone, page 1
  2. (intransitive) To kiss.
    • In the faint glow of a single blue bulb hanging from a clothesline they bussed and fondled.2007, James Isaiah Gabbe, LaRue's Maneuvers, Chapter 10, LaRue, The Blue Light, p259-60

Noun (2)

buss (plural busses)

  1. A herring buss, a type of shallow-keeled Dutch fishing boat used especially for herring fishing.
    • the Dutch whalers and herring busses1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter XIX, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and...

Noun (3)

buss (plural busses)

  1. (archaic, slang) A blunderbuss.
    • By the immortal powers, if you had let Rory put a few slugs into the old buss, he'd have settled the baronet's hash altogether.1885, F. Claudius Armstrong, The Warhawk (page 39)

Verb (2)

buss (third-person singular simple present busses, present participle bussing, simple past and past participle bussed)

  1. (intransitive, slang, vulgar) To ejaculate; to eject semen or to squirt.

Proper noun capitalized: Buss

Buss (plural Busses)

  1. A surname.

Also used as

buss is also the archaic form of bus.

buss is also the alternative form of bussing.

Examples of buss in a sentence

  • As the repatriated explorer dodges down to buss the earth […] he is so thoroughly caught up in the rhapsody of the moment that he fails to take into account the traffic behind him.1982, TC Boyle, Water Music, Penguin, published 2006, page 189:
  • Sam...really was six-ten and his head bussed the ceiling.2007, Winter 61, Fiddlehead:

Forms of buss

Noun
pluralbusses
Verb
third-person singular presentbusses
present participlebussing
past participlebussed
pastbussed
Proper noun
pluralBusses

Past tense of buss: bussed

Origin of buss

Uncertain. First attested in the 1560s. Possibly from Proto-Indo-European *bʰus- (“lip, to kiss”) via Proto-Germanic *busaną (compare German bussen), but in any case imitative of kissing. Compare Welsh bus (“kiss, lip”) and Irish bus (“lips, mouth”) (both may have influenced English), Persian بوس (bus, “kiss”), Latvian buča (“kiss”), Latin basium (“kiss”). Mainstream proposals like in The Free Dictionary have suggested it is a blend of old English dialect words bass (related to French baiser) and cuss (akin to kissen); perhaps compare puss.

Borrowed from Dutch buis.

Clipping of bussing.

Phrases with buss

Words that rhyme with buss

11 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about buss

What does buss mean?
Buss means a kiss.
How do you use buss in a sentence?
As the repatriated explorer dodges down to buss the earth […] he is so thoroughly caught up in the rhapsody of the moment that he fails to take into account the traffic behind him.
What part of speech is buss?
Buss can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce buss?
Buss is pronounced /bʌs/.
What is the plural of buss?
The plural of buss is busses.

Words near buss in the dictionary

  1. Busoga
  2. Busoong
  3. buspirone
  4. Busra
  5. busroute
  6. buss
  7. buss down
  8. buss downs
  9. buss it down
  10. buss-down
  11. buss-downs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: buss (page history and authors); Buss (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-Buss.ogg.

Cite this entry: “buss.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/buss. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.