bus

\bys\

/\bys\/ noun

By · According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA) ·

The verdict

“bus” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #1,508) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.

#1,508
frequency rank, French
4,251
“B” headwords
20
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Véhicule de transport en commun routier pouvant transporter plusieurs dizaines de passagers.

Corpus desk

Index FR-bus · bus · French

bus · rank #1,508 · 0 variants · 20 confusables

  • FREQ-COMMON #1,508
  • LEN-MID 3 letters
  • VOW-1 1 vowel
  • CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-MID 4,251
  • PHOTO-FINISH avions

Nearest frequency peer: avions (-1 rank slots)

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Voisins de fréquence du confusable « bus »

Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous

corpus weight

What this shows Les barres placent « bus » face aux lemmes français les plus proches par rang, pas un reprint du bureau des confusables.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026

Visual similarity to commonly confused words

How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).

bus vs by
33% similar
bus vs BV
0% similar
bus vs BX
0% similar

Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).

Key facts for bus
PropertyValue
Headwordbus
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\bys\
Letters3
Frequency rank#1,508
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs20
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Rang de corpus près des confusables de « bus »

La fréquence va de la poignée de mots du quotidien (gauche) à la longue queue presque jamais vue (droite).busse place ici:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

L'échelle est logarithmique (chaque tic ≈ 10× plus rare). Dans la même bande de rareté figurent « avions » (#1,507), « certainement » (#1,509), « autorité » (#1,506). Parmi 4,251 lemmes en « B », « bus » est au #1,508. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Easy to mix with look-alikes

The spelling risk for bus is neighbouring look-alikes ("by", "BV", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \bys\. Frequency #1,508 among 4,251 “B” headwords. 3 recorded senses keep meaning in play.

Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for bus, a sign its spelling follows regular French conventions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "by", "BV", "BX", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct French form is bus, spelled B-U-S.

Definition

  1. 1
    Véhicule de transport en commun routier pouvant transporter plusieurs dizaines de passagers.
  2. 2
    Ensemble de lignes de transmission sur lesquelles plus de deux équipements sont reliés en parallèle. Par extension on parle aussi de bus pour certaines liaisons se comportant comme tel (exemple liaison USB)
  3. 3
    Dispositif non bouclé reliant plusieurs composants, sous-ensembles ou matériels pour permettre entre eux l’apport d’énergie et la circulation d’informations.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how bus appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. Tous les employés supérieurs ont leur auto, en général d'assez belles voitures américaines, des services de bus vraiment modernes assurent les transports en commun des moins fortunés
  2. En sortant par la porte de la grande muraille, qui donne directement sur le terminus de ma ligne 32, je trouve le dernier bus à attendre.

Synonyms

autobusautocarcar

This word in other languages

bus(English)autobús(Español)Bus(Deutsch)autocarro(Português)

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 French corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "bus"?
"bus" is spelled B-U-S. The IPA pronunciation is \bys\.
What does "bus" mean?
As a noun, "bus" means: Véhicule de transport en commun routier pouvant transporter plusieurs dizaines de passagers.
What words are commonly confused with "bus"?
"bus" is commonly confused with "by", "BV", "BX". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "bus"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "bus" is \bys\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "bus" come from?
"bus" is a French word. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data for this and other words across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German on PlainSpell.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Similar French words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "bus", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

mur#1,531foi#1,478tué#1,543âme#1,547

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list