bucket brigade

American  

noun

1. a line of persons formed to extinguish a fire by passing on buckets of water quickly from a distant source.

2. any group of persons who cooperate to help cope with an emergency.

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Etymology

Origin of bucket brigade

First recorded in 1910–15

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

bucket brigade

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

These groups act like a molecular bucket brigade to grab positively charged potassium ions and quickly pass them to the next tethered sulfonate in line, helping the ions zip through the membrane virtually unimpeded.

From Science Magazine ● Apr. 26, 2023

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

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

Back and forth, back and forth we went: Perilee hauling water up from the well, and the rest of us forming a bucket brigade.

From "Hattie Big Sky" by Kirby Larson