cheese bus

7.9

A bright yellow school bus people call as a joke because it looks like cheese

noun
/tʃiːz bʌs/

Informal

: autobús escolar

I rode the cheese bus to school throughout elementary and middle school.

Examples

Every morning, the children waited at the corner for the cheese bus to arrive.
Look at that bright cheese bus!
He joked that his first car was actually a retired cheese bus.
The cheese bus drove past us quickly.
Every morning, the children eagerly climbed aboard the cheese bus painted in bright yellow.
He fondly remembered the days when he would take the cheese bus to school with his friends.
With its cheerful color and playful nickname, the cheese bus always brought smiles to the children waiting at the stop.

Synonyms

bus

vscheese bus

∞ 1.0

A large vehicle that carries many people along a set route

is a brightly painted vehicle for school children with a playful tone

school bus

vscheese bus

73 1.0

A large bus that carries children to and from school

emphasizes bright paint and humorous tone rather than neutral practical use

Surface Forms

cheese bus singular

cheese buses plural

Morphology

cheese + bus

The literal parts 'cheese' (a food) and 'bus' (a vehicle) do not directly compose to mean a brightly colored or yellow school bus; understanding this sense requires a metaphorical or cultural inference that 'cheese' evokes a yellow colour. That associative mapping is not a regular, cross-linguistic compositional pattern and would not be reliably predictable by a B1 learner who only knows the constituent words.

Etymology

Cheese bus probably comes from the bright yellow paint of many school buses, which looked like a slice of cheese. That's why the phrase is used jokingly to mean 'a brightly colored school bus'.