[buhs] Pronunciation Key noun, plural bus·es, bus·ses, verb, bused or bussed, bus·ing or bus·sing. | 1. | a large motor vehicle, having a long body, equipped with seats or benches for passengers, usually operating as part of a scheduled service; omnibus. |
| 2. | a similar horse-drawn vehicle. |
| 3. | a passenger automobile or airplane used in a manner resembling that of a bus. |
| 4. | any vehicle operated to transport children to school. |
| 5. | a low, movable filing cabinet. |
| 6. | Electricity. Also called bus bar, bus·bar
[buhs-bahr] Pronunciation Key. a heavy conductor, often made of copper in the shape of a bar, used to collect, carry, and distribute powerful electric currents, as those produced by generators. |
| 7. | Computers. a circuit that connects the CPU with other devices in a computer. |
| 8. | to convey or transport by bus: to bus the tourists to another hotel. |
| 9. | to transport (pupils) to school by bus, esp. as a means of achieving racial integration. |
| 10. | to travel on or by means of a bus: We bused to New York on a theater trip. |
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
[buhs] Pronunciation Key | to work or act as a busboy or busgirl: She bused for her meals during her student days. |
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
[maws-bak-er, mos-] Pronunciation Key | Emil, Jr. (“Bus”), 1922–1997, U.S. yacht racer and government official. |
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
| bus
(bŭs) Pronunciation Key
n. pl. bus·es or bus·ses
v. bused or bussed, bus·ing or bus·sing, bus·es or bus·ses v. tr.
v. intr.
[Short for omnibus. V., intr., sense 2, back-formation from busboy.] |
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
bus
| bus | |
noun | |
| 1. | a vehicle carrying many passengers; used for public transport; "he always rode the bus to work" |
| 2. | the topology of a network whose components are connected by a busbar [syn: bus topology] |
| 3. | an electrical conductor that makes a common connection between several circuits; "the busbar in this computer can transmit data either way between any two components of the system" [syn: busbar] |
| 4. | a car that is old and unreliable; "the fenders had fallen off that old bus" |
verb | |
| 1. | send or move around by bus; "The children were bussed to school" |
| 2. | ride in a bus |
| 3. | remove used dishes from the table in restaurants |
bus architecture
One of the sets of conductors (wires, PCB tracks or connections in an integrated circuit) connecting the various functional units in a computer. There are busses both within the CPU and connecting it to external memory and peripheral devices. The data bus, address bus and control signals, despite their names, really constitute a single bus since each is useless without the others.
The width of the data bus, i.e. the number of parallel connectors, and its clock rate determine its data rate (the number of bytes per second which it can carry). This is one of the factors limiting a computer's performance. Most current microprocessors have 32-bit busses both internally and externally. 100 or 133 megahertz bus clock rates are common. The bus clock is typically slower than the processor clock.
Some processors have internal busses which are wider than their external busses (usually twice the width) since the width of the internal bus affects the speed of all operations and has less effect on the overall system cost than the width of the external bus.
Various bus designs have been used in the PC, including ISA, EISA, Micro Channel, VL-bus and PCI. Other peripheral busses are NuBus, TURBOchannel, VMEbus, MULTIBUS and STD bus.
Some networks are implemented as a bus at the physical layer, e.g. Ethernet - a one-bit bus operating at 10 (or later 100) megabits per second.
The term is almost certainly derived from the electrical engineering term "bus bar" - a substantial, rigid power supply conductor to which several connections are made. This was once written "'bus bar" as it was a contraction of "omnibus bar" - a connection bar "for all", by analogy with the passenger omnibus - a conveyance "for all".
More on derivation.
(2000-03-20)
Bus
Bus\, n. [Abbreviated from omnibus.] An omnibus. [Colloq.]
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