bombela, noun
- Forms:
- Also bombella, mbombela, and with initial capital.
- Origin:
- IsiZuluShow more Unknown; probably isiZulu bombela head for (a foreign place), perhaps related to ibombo direction or bearings one takes on journeying.
a. A (railway) bus.
1934 R.M. Agar-O’Connell in Stokes & Wilter Veld-Trails 109Twelve months’ exile at the mines and in the train and bombela (railway ’bus).
1952 H. Klein Land of Silver Mist 28One of the huge railway road motor service buses, called ‘bombelas’ by the Natives throughout South Africa, drew up outside the store in a cloud of dust. Pondos, homeward bound from a spell on the Rand gold mines, climbed out.
b. A train; more recently, a commuter train. Also attributive.
1964 G. Gordon Four People 261Hundreds of them..hastily bundled their blankets, clothing and other belongings and caught the ‘mbombela’, or workers’ train, home to the Transkei.
1990 Weekly Mail 21 Sept. 9Back in the Fifties a few people did leap out of windows when tsotsis terrorised the bombelas that connected the various Orlandos (before the acronym Soweto was coined) with Jo’burg. Those raids were..just plain criminal, as were the two last week on the same trains.
A (railway) bus.
A train; more recently, a commuter train. Also attributive.
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