From WordNet (r) 2.0 (August 2003) [wn]:
bus
n 1: a vehicle carrying many passengers; used for public
transport; "he always rode the bus to work" [syn:
autobus, coach, charabanc, double-decker,
jitney, motorbus, motorcoach, omnibus]
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" [syn: jalopy, heap]
v 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
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Bus \Bus\, n. [Abbreviated from omnibus.]
An omnibus. [Colloq.]
[1913 Webster] busbar
From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (19 Sep 2003) [foldoc]:
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
(http://www.foldoc.org/pub/omnibus.html)}.
(2000-03-20)