Which to use
“bus” and “buss” are a confusable English pair: similar on the page, but distinct in meaning, check the gloss before you choose.
- #1,554
- “bus” frequency rank
- #35,640
- “buss” frequency rank
- 37194
- confusion score
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | bus | buss |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | A motor vehicle for transporting large numbers of people along roads. | A kiss. |
Same sound, different letters: bus vs buss
Muted letters are shared; highlighted letters are the only spelling cue when pronunciation matches. Shared run: 3 letters.
Ear matches; page differs - bus and buss
This is the hard kind. bus and buss are pronounced identically (/bʌs/) and both work as anoun. Neither the ear nor the grammar will rescue you; only the meaning does, so the glosses below are the whole decision. They differ by 1 extra letter(s) - “bus” sits inside “buss”. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 37194, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.
bus is recorded at frequency rank #1,554, classified as anoun, pronounced /bʌs/. buss is at rank #35,640, tagged as anoun, pronounced /bʌs/.
Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.
With a confusion score of 37194, this pair ranks #296,609 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs - roughly mid-pack for confusability.
Orthographic DNA of bus vs buss
Shared letters: bsu. Private to "bus": -. Private to "buss": -.
"bus" · 3 letters · shape CVC · "buss" · 4 letters · shape CVCC
Known mistypes of this pair
- buss ← bbuss · bsus · ubss
Frequently Asked Questions
Do "bus" and "buss" mean the same thing in a sentence?
In ordinary English text, does "bus" or "buss" show up more?
Useful next steps
You've separated the homophone pair "bus" / "buss". Follow the links when you need the full entry or a neighbour that trips the same ear.
- Full dictionary entry for "bus" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
- Full dictionary entry for "buss" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
- This pair ranks #296,609 of 530,003 scored English confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
- "bus" and "buss" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "BFS vs buss". Nearby pair
- Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes
Confusion rank #296,609 of 530,003 scored English pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.