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Etymology and origin of the English word buss

Pronunciation

buss1 fishing boat, cargo ship

Confidence
Probable
Formation
Borrowing
First attested
c. 1400 Robert Mannyng's Chronicle, composed before 1338
Borrowed from
Old French busse via Middle English

Etymology

The word for the boat is inherited from Middle English busse,[2][3] borrowed from Old French busse, also buce and busce, the Anglo-Norman form,[4][5] recorded from about 1170 for a store ship.[5][4] It is perhaps from Medieval Latin bucia, also buza, a transport vessel, first recorded in the early 12th century and often in accounts of the Crusades; its further origin is uncertain.[4][2] The sense "fishing boat" came from Middle Dutch buysse or Middle Low German bǖse, themselves from the French or Latin word.[4][6] Related forms are Old Norse búza, a warship or merchant ship,[4][7][2] Old High German būzō (“pirate ship”)[4][7] and German Büse.[4][7][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

A large cargo ship: before 1400, in a manuscript of Robert Mannyng's Chronicle (composed before 1338).[4] The Shorter Oxford likewise dates this sense to Middle English.[6]

Semantic evolution

The Anglo-Norman and medieval Latin words meant a transport ship or store ship, often in the Crusades;[5][4] English kept that sense, now rare, but from 1471, in the records of the Scottish Parliament, a buss was above all the two- or three-masted boat of the North Sea herring fishery, a sense taken from Dutch or Low German.[4][6] Johnson (1755) defined it as "a boat for fishing".[9] The Dutch herring busses were familiar off Britain: a Shetland account of 1871 says that some two thousand of them visited Lerwick each year, and in East Anglia the word survived in dialect for a fishing boat.[10]

Timeline

  • c. 1400 – a large ship for cargo, in Robert Mannyng's Chronicle.[4]
  • 1471 – a two- or three-masted fishing boat, especially of the North Sea herring fishery.[4][6]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (historical) A two- or three-masted fishing boat with square sails, used especially in the North Sea herring fishery.[2][6][4][8]
  2. (historical) A large ship for carrying cargo.[4][6]

buss2 kiss

Confidence
Uncertain
Formation
Onomatopoeia
First attested
1566 before 1566, Richard Edwards, Damon and Pithias

Etymology

The word for the kiss is of uncertain origin.[4][11] The OED takes it as probably imitative in the end, perhaps a variant of the earlier verb bass (“to kiss”), with the noun formed from the verb or from the noun bass (“a kiss”);[4] the Shorter Oxford, Hoad and the Oxford Dictionary of English also see an alteration of bass,[6][11][12] which the Oxford Dictionary of English and the Concise Oxford take as probably from French baiser (“to kiss”), from Latin bāsiō.[12][13] Etymonline, Klein, Collins and Merriam-Webster Unabridged call it imitative,[14][7][15][2] like dialectal German Buss and Busserl, a little kiss,[7][4][15] Spanish buz,[14][4] Swedish puss,[4] Welsh bus and Scottish Gaelic bus (“kiss, lip”),[14][7] Middle Irish bus (“lip”)[2] and Lithuanian bučiuoti (“to kiss”).[2] The American Heritage Dictionary and Dictionary.com suggest a blend of bass with another obsolete word for a kiss, the descendant of Old English coss, cognate with German Kuss;[16][17] the American Heritage Dictionary also suggests a borrowing of the Gaelic word in its sense "lips, mouth".[16]

Earliest recorded meaning

To kiss: before 1566, in Richard Edwards's play Damon and Pithias.[4] The noun follows in 1567, in George Turberville's Epitaphes, Epigrams;[4][2] Etymonline dates the noun to the 1560s and the verb to the 1570s.[14]

Semantic evolution

A buss was often a loud or hearty kiss,[4][8] and the word had a homely, rustic sound beside kiss: Robert Herrick wrote in 1648, "We busse our wantons, but our wives we kisse."[14][2] Shakespeare used the verb figuratively, of towers whose tops "buss the clouds" in Troilus and Cressida (1609), and Johnson (1755) quoted that line and Pope's "smacking buss".[4][9] The intransitive verb is recorded from 1633.[4] The word is now archaic or dialectal in Britain,[15][6] but it survives as an informal word in North America.[13][6] In Scots and in dialects from Northumberland to Cornwall it was still the common word for a kiss in the 19th century.[10]

Timeline

  • before 1566 – verb, to kiss.[4]
  • 1567 – noun, a kiss, especially a loud or hearty one.[4][2]
  • 1609 – verb, figuratively, in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida.[4]
  • 1633 – intransitive verb, to kiss.[4]

Meanings

Noun

  1. (archaic, dialect or North American informal) A kiss, especially a loud or hearty one: She gave her grandson a buss on the cheek.[15][13][4]

Verb

  1. (archaic, dialect or North American informal) To kiss: He bussed his aunt at the door.[15][13][2]

Usage notes

Scots and northern English also have buss for a bush, and a verb buss, to dress or adorn, a variant of busk;[2][4][10] in south-west England a buss was a young calf.[10]

References

  1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  3. ^ Stratmann, Francis Henry (1891), A Middle-English Dictionary, revised by Henry Bradley, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ a b c Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  7. ^ a b c d e f Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  8. ^ a b c The Chambers Dictionary (2008), 11th ed., Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap
  9. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  10. ^ a b c d Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  11. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  12. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  13. ^ a b c d Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  14. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  15. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  16. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  17. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Buss.” Etymologically, 13 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/en/buss. Accessed 14 Nov. 2026.

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