巴士
bāshì · HSK 4
bus
🚌 巴士 = bā + shì, phonetic loan from English 'bus'
巴 (bā) and 士 (shì) are chosen purely for sound, not meaning — together they approximate the English word 'bus'. This is a Cantonese-origin transliteration now common across Mandarin too.
巴 — single pictograph; itself a radical 巴
Traditionally read as a picture of a large snake: the ancient Shuowen dictionary defines 巴 as a snake said to swallow elephants. It also named the ancient Ba state in present-day Chongqing. Today it means 'cling to' or 'long for' (巴不得), and it is a noun suffix in 尾巴 'tail' and 嘴巴 'mouth'.