bucket brigade
Americannoun
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a line of persons formed to extinguish a fire by passing on buckets of water quickly from a distant source.
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any group of persons who cooperate to help cope with an emergency.
Etymology
Origin of bucket brigade
First recorded in 1910–15
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.
“It was like a bucket brigade: a truck on one side, a truck on the other,” he said.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 23, 2025
Everyone on board the Araon pitched in, forming a bucket brigade to move more than 100 ice core boxes to the ship freezer.
From Science Magazine ● Apr. 18, 2024
Two weeks later, there would be a bucket brigade ready to douse him at the first sign of flames.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 4, 2021
Cabinet members held a series of briefings to describe efforts to get freight trains, trucks and more ships into what amounted to a complex bucket brigade to bring fuel up the East Coast.
From New York Times ● May 12, 2021
Near the carousel, a bucket brigade was hard at work.
From "Willodeen" by Katherine Applegate
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.
