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.
-
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 fire bucket brigade, with workers passing the melons down the line to be placed into large boxes on a flatbed, a process the owner called “pitching.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 30, 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
On the beach, the long chain of rock passers looks like an old-timey bucket brigade for fighting a fire.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 3, 2022
We formed a bucket brigade to pass the skull box up the chute, out the slot, down the Dragon’s Back . . . through the crawl, up another ladder, out to the surface.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 9, 2015
Those closest to the fire jumped back as a spray of sparks rose up like demonic fireflies, but the bucket brigade pressed forward again as soon as the embers settled.
From "Stella by Starlight" by Sharon M. Draper
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.
