omnibus from early 19th century:
The 1820s saw the introduction in Paris of a horse-drawn vehicle that carried passengers along a fixed route for a fare. This was called a voiture omnibus, a ‘vehicle for everybody’. When it came to London the vehicle was called simply an omnibus. Though ‘omnibus’ was taken from French, its origin is a Latin form meaning ‘for all’, based on omnis ‘all’, and by the 1930s people had shortened this rather pompous, learned word to bus. In the 1830s an omnibus came to be a volume containing several works previously published separately.
在公共汽车出现之间，人们可以搭乘出租马车外出。这种出租马车有点像现在的出租车，但需要提前预订。
1823年，一位名叫 Stanislas Baudry 的法国人在法国南特市郊区创办了一个蒸汽磨坊，并利用多余的热气提供公共浴场服务。为此，他提供一辆大型马车来接送住在市中心的客人来往浴场。在提供这种运输业务时，他发现有很多上车的客人并不是去他的浴场，而是在中途其他地点下车。
受此启发，1826年，他放弃了浴场业务，专门经营这种新型的运输业务，并专门准备了两辆16座的马车。马车的出发点在一家制帽店前面，这家制帽店有个招牌，上面用拉丁语写着Omnès Omnibus （ all for all ），其中的 omnibus 意思是“ for all ”，与他的这种公共马车性质非常契合。因此，他就把自己经营的这种公共马车称为 omnibus ，这就是公共汽车的前身。单词 bus 就是 omnibus 的简称。