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
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
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
In 1999, when B’Racz moved down the block to a space more than double the size, the community volunteered to move boxes of books, forming a bucket brigade to pass them down Haywood Street.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 28, 2016
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.
