omnibus
Part of speech: noun
adj
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: hobbies
lifestyle
philately
Etymology: Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *h₃ep-der.
Proto-Italic *opnis
Latin omnis
Latin omnibuslbor.
French omnibusbor.
English omnibus
Borrowed from French (voiture) omnibus (“(carriage) for all”), from Latin omnibus (“for all”), dative plural of omnis (“all”).
Inflected forms:
form: omnibuses
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: omnibusses
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: omnibi
pos: noun
tags: nonstandard
plural
form: omnibuses
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: omnibusses
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: omnibusing
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: omnibussing
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: omnibused
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: omnibused
pos: verb
tags: past
form: omnibussed
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: omnibussed
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A bus (vehicle for transporting large numbers of people along roads).
pos: noun
tags: dated
examples: In front of the latter [coach-houses for railway carriages] is a handsome building, intended as offices for the clerks of the Company, coach-offices, and apartments for the reception and accommodation of passengers, who will be conveyed thither in omnibusses from Liverpool, and taking their respective places in the travelling carriages, will be let off down the inclined plane of the little Tunnel, to be hooked to the locomotives in the area, on the other side of the hill.
Athelstan Arundel walked home all the way, foaming and raging. No omnibus, cab, or conveyance ever built could contain a young man in such a rage. His mother lived at Pembridge Square, which is four good measured miles from Lincoln's Inn.
"Please," his voice quavered through the foul brown air, "Please, is that an omnibus?" / "Omnibus est," said the driver, without turning round.
When he came back to his work after lunch he carried in his head a picture of the Strand, scatted with omnibuses, and of the purple shapes of leaves pressed flat upon the gravel, as if his eyes had always been bent upon the ground.
Omnibuses were advertised to run in connection with the trains to and from points in the City and West End; fare to the former 3d., to the latter 6d. from Bricklayers Arms.
Omnibus, my friend Mr. [Donald] Swann informs me, comes from the Latin omnibus, meaning to or for by with or from everybody, which is a very good description. Well, this song is about a bus, it's wittily subtitled—I thought of this—'A Transport of Delight'.
Baldrick, I want you to take this [money] and go out, and buy a turkey so large you'd think its mother had been rogered by an omnibus.
gloss: An anthology of previously released material linked together by theme or author, especially in book form.
pos: noun
examples: This work is an omnibus containing all books in the Remembrance of Earth’s Past series.
Orb published an omnibus by Hal Clement, Heavy Planet, containing his novels Mission of Gravity and Star Light, plus other related material, and an omnibus of three of James White's "Sector General" novels, Alien Emergencies, as well as a reissue of A[lfred] E[lton] [v]an Vogt's The World of Null-A.
gloss: A broadcast programme consisting of all of the episodes of a serial that have been shown in the previous week.
pos: noun
examples: The omnibus edition of The Archers is broadcast every Sunday morning at 11.00.
In late 1959, well before he was required to adapt his six-part Quatermass and the Pit teleplay into a ninety-seven-minute film script, [Nigel] Kneale supervised the editing of the BBC version into two feature-length episodes for a repeat broadcast. In 1989, he had another go at it, trimming the 207-minute serial into a 178-minute omnibus for release on video cassette, mostly losing comic relief.
gloss: A stamp issue, usually commemorative, that appears simultaneously in several countries as a joint issue.
pos: noun
examples: [M]any of the African nations issuing the World Cup stamps have pandered to international collectors, with some stamps not even sold in the country of issue. These ‘omnibus’ stamps featured topics and individuals with no links to the issuing country. African stamps displaying Disney themes, Princess Diana, Michael Jackson and Sylvester Stallone all belong to this category.
gloss: An assistant waiter.
pos: noun
tags: US
obsolete
slang
examples: “Then you divide your army amongst the various houses where restorations are ordered for Jubilee day?” / “Certainly—say one waiter to ten guests—if it was a dinner we should send one waiter to six guests—with runners, of course.” / “Runners?” / “Omnibuses you call them here—young ones—apprentices—who wait on the waiters.” / “Run everywhere, do anything?” / “Omnibuses.” / What a number of omnibuses will be running at that big mansion of Sir Julian Goldsmid’s on Tuesday. M. [Venant] Benoist has undertaken to restore—restore! what an admirable word—a thousand famishing ladies and gentlemen on that day.
A waiter is paid $25 a month. He must pay his omnibus himself. The hotel does not pay the omnibuses. By this arrangement it comes about in some hotels that a waiter pays his omnibus more than he himself receives from wages.
Little omnibuses in white suits moved about, gathering up papers or napkins dropped by careless diners; bigger omnibuses in dinner jackets exported trays of dishes which the lordly artists of the serving force were above touching.
gloss: an omnibus box.
pos: noun
gloss: Containing multiple items.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
examples: The legislature enacted an omnibus appropriations bill.
The inventors face a similar uphill battle in their fight against the omnibus bill.
[…] I guess it's good theatrics to hold up all the pages of the appropriations bills that are gathered there, but I should point out to my colleague that the Republican omnibus appropriations acts were longer in length than the one he has there. So what? I mean, has this debate become so shallow that it's all about the number of pages of the bill?
In 1852, G[eorge] H[enry] Lewes published an omnibus review of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton, George Sand's oeuvre, and the work of other nineteenth-century "lady novelists" in the Westminster Review.
gloss: Of a transportation service, calling at every station, as opposed to express; local.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
gloss: To combine (legislative bills, etc.) into a single package.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: In the tax levy measure were omnibused all appropriations for the maintenance of government for the fiscal year.
gloss: To drive an omnibus.
pos: verb
tags: dated
intransitive
examples: I'm two shillings short of usual rainy-day fares, and not a passenger is out, I'm certain—least ways can I see him, if there was. It's nice business, omnibusing is—in summer time!
gloss: To travel or be transported by omnibus.
pos: verb
tags: dated
intransitive
examples: [W]hat would not be the effect on the goods, and even on the passenger traffic, of the Grand Junction and London and Birmingham lines, if two miles of the rails were to-morrow taken up through the town of Birmingham, so that the first (good) had all to be carted, and the second (passengers) had all to be omnibused, over the breach! Yet, such is the present state of the communication at Manchester!
[…] Sharon Springs are five hours from Albany, three by railroad, and two by stage-coach. Passengers arrive in time to dress comfortably for dinner. The drive up is not particularly picturesque, but it is through woods and fields, and this, as a change from omnibusing between sidewalks and brick walls, is, at least, refreshing.
Two days I hired a carriage and showed them all distant places, such as Bois de Boulogne, Longchamps, Champ de Mars, Invalides, and some of the outer boulevards, Gobelins, Père La Chaise, Jardin de Plantes; but generally we omnibussed it, and for a few sous each you can get any distance along and athwart the city.
[John] Virtue has often sung his ode to pollution; the artist's friend. Whether to embrace or reject the begrimed air, the half-choked light has historically sorted out the men from the boys in London painters. […] Claude Monet was in two minds about it, cursing it from his room in the Savoy in 1899 for blotting out the fugitive sun. Yet by far the strongest of his paintings – completed in a studio a long, long way from the Thames – were the greeny-grey early-morning images of crowds tramping and omnibussing their way to work over hostile bridges, unblessed by even a hint of watery sunshine.
Derived words: bus
busboy
man on the Clapham omnibus
omnibus box
omnibusful
omnibusman
omnibus progression
omnibus pudding
Translations: