bucket
Americannoun
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a deep, cylindrical vessel, usually of metal, plastic, or wood, with a flat bottom and a semicircular bail, for collecting, carrying, or holding water, sand, fruit, etc.; pail.
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anything resembling or suggesting this.
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Machinery.
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any of the scoops attached to or forming the endless chain in certain types of conveyors or elevators.
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the scoop or clamshell of a steam shovel, power shovel, or dredge.
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a vane or blade of a waterwheel, paddle wheel, water turbine, or the like.
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(in a dam) a concave surface at the foot of a spillway for deflecting the downward flow of water.
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a bucketful.
a bucket of sand.
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Basketball.
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Informal. field goal.
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the part of the keyhole extending from the foul line to the end line.
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Bowling. a leave of the two, four, five, and eight pins, or the three, five, six, and nine pins.
verb (used with object)
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to lift, carry, or handle in a bucket (often followed by up orout ).
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Chiefly British. to ride (a horse) fast and without concern for tiring it.
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to handle (orders, transactions, etc.) in or as if in a bucket shop.
verb (used without object)
idioms
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kick the bucket, to die.
His children were greedily waiting for him to kick the bucket.
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drop in the bucket, a small, usually inadequate amount in relation to what is needed or requested.
The grant for research was just a drop in the bucket.
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drop the bucket on, to implicate, incriminate, or expose.
noun
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an open-topped roughly cylindrical container; pail
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Also called: bucketful. the amount a bucket will hold
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any of various bucket-like parts of a machine, such as the scoop on a mechanical shovel
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a cupped blade or bucket-like compartment on the outer circumference of a water wheel, paddle wheel, etc
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computing a unit of storage on a direct-access device from which data can be retrieved
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a turbine rotor blade
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an ice cream container
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slang to die
verb
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(tr) to carry in or put into a bucket
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(of rain) to fall very heavily
it bucketed all day
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to travel or drive fast
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(tr) to ride (a horse) hard without consideration
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slang (tr) to criticize severely
Regionalisms
Though both bucket and pail are used throughout the entire U.S., pail has its greatest use in the Northern U.S., and bucket is more commonly used elsewhere, especially in the Midland and Southern U.S.
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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bucketsimple
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bucketssimple
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have bucketedperfect
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has bucketedperfect
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am bucketingprogressive
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are bucketingprogressive
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is bucketingprogressive
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have been bucketingperfect progressive
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has been bucketingperfect progressive
Past
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bucketedsimple
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had bucketedperfect
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was bucketingprogressive
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were bucketingprogressive
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had been bucketingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of bucket
1250–1300; Middle English buket < Anglo-French < Old English bucc (variant of būc vessel, belly; cognate with German Bauch ) + Old French -et -et
Explanation
An open, round container with a handle is a bucket. You might take a bucket and shovel to the beach for making sand castles. Buckets are usually made of metal or plastic, and are typically used to carry liquids. A dairy farmer might catch milk in a metal bucket, announcing at the end of the morning, "I got six buckets of milk!" The expression "to kick the bucket" means to die — this particular meaning might stem from the French buquet, "balance," a beam that was used for hanging slaughtered animals.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
For clients who like to pick stocks, advisers may designate a “play money” bucket.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 13, 2026
A man named Luis Flores took a bucket full of rock and earth and threw it to the side.
From Barron's ● Jun. 28, 2026
"Australia is for many of us a bucket list destination," the UK travel industry body tells us.
From BBC ● Jun. 26, 2026
By the time we packed up our tents and chairs, my brother had crossed Melville’s masterpiece off his bucket list.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 25, 2026
One day about the middle of the afternoon, I took a broom and a bucket of water and walked up to Daisy’s playhouse.
From "Summer of the Monkeys" by Wilson Rawls
It’s particularly important for retirement savers to read the tea leaves on CD rates because so many people have cash buckets set up to fund their living expenses.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 10, 2026
Households are being asked to use watering cans or buckets for activities such as watering gardens, filling paddling pools or washing cars.
From BBC ● Jul. 3, 2026
A group of men sits together on a sofa as bartenders place bottles of Chivas Regal in buckets of ice.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 27, 2026
Crews stunned the fish with electricity, scooped them up in buckets, trucked them to a hatchery and ultimately moved them to Arroyo Hondo Creek in Santa Barbara County.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 9, 2026
People shouted back and forth, opening stalls, grabbing buckets and ropes.
From "Rump: The (Fairly) True Story of Rumpelstilskin" by Liesl Shurtliff
Race organiser Duncan Smith said: "It's been a brilliant day with fantastic weather, after three years when it's absolutely bucketed down with rain."
From BBC ● Apr. 6, 2026
“I think we need a more personalized approach for each individual in determining when they should actually start screening—not this bucketed start age,” Bea says.
From Scientific American ● Jun. 2, 2023
He said the Fed would revisit how firms were bucketed by size when it came to supervision and regulation.
From New York Times ● Mar. 28, 2023
Any captured water is bucketed to toilets for flushing.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 1, 2018
I let Charley out, and suddenly an angry streak of gray burned across the clearing in the pines and bucketed into the house.
From "Travels with Charley in Search of America" by John Steinbeck
For much of Saturday afternoon, the skies above Charlotte were a dirty shade of grey, the rain bucketing down, the wind blowing hard, thunder and lightning seen and heard every minute or so.
From BBC ● Jun. 28, 2026
Choosing value-based strategies, dividend stocks and bucketing approaches can help you navigate several market scenarios, Saglimbene said.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 21, 2022
I’m going to be listing out all relevant fantasy football players each week and bucketing them into tiers.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 21, 2022
“The water was still thigh-high at 7 a.m. and those who parked their cars in the streets were in panic because their vehicles were submerged … Other residents were bucketing out water from their homes.”
From Washington Times ● Sep. 5, 2022
I arrived in the morning that day, and I remember it was bucketing down.
From "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
