Miss the bus

When used figuratively it means to miss an opportunity and it took on this figurative meaning in the first decade of the 20th century. Neville Chamberlain made the expression famous in a speech he made in the House of Commons on April 4th 1940 when he remarked, “Hitler has missed the bus” referring to German inactivity at the start of the Second World War, sometimes called the phoney war. Five weeks after this speech, Hitler began his invasion of the Low Countries and France.