bucket shop
Americannoun
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Stock Exchange. an unsound, unethical, or overly aggressive brokerage house.
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Slang. any shady commercial agency, as one dealing in illegally priced theater tickets.
noun
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an unregistered firm of stockbrokers that engages in speculation with clients' funds
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any small business that cannot be relied upon, esp one selling cheap airline tickets
Etymology
Origin of bucket shop
An Americanism dating back to 1870–75; originally a cheap drinking establishment, allegedly so called because liquor was mixed or sold in buckets
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.
From the outside, a bucket shop resembled a legitimate brokerage.
From Barron's ● Apr. 7, 2026
“They had a fine office and the largest and completest quotation board I have ever seen anywhere,” Edwin Lefèvre writes of one bucket shop in his 1923 classic, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator External link.
From Barron's ● Apr. 7, 2026
Pressler sat on the board of Sky Capital LLC, a defunct bucket shop run by the fraudster, Ross Mandell.
From New York Times ● Oct. 13, 2014
Ryanair, the "no frills" bucket shop airline, has finally confirmed that passengers will now be charged to use the loo.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 10, 2010
A broker runs a bucket shop when he sells stock to his clients on margin and either never buys the stock for their accounts, or else sells it immediately after buying it.
From Successful Stock Speculation by Butler, John James
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.
