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 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
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
All off-duty sailors and Marines were ordered to set up a kind of bucket brigade, using wheel barrows to shuttle coal from other coal bunkers, according to a 1964 account by retired Marine Corps Lt.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 30, 2021
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.
