bucket
Syllables: buck·et/ˈbʌk.ət/UK/ˈbʌkɪt/
bucket noun: a container made of rigid material, often with a handle, used to carry liquids or small items.
Noun
bucket (plural buckets)
- A container made of rigid material, often with a handle, used to carry liquids or small items.
- I need a bucket to carry the water from the well.
- The crab was cool and very light. But the water was thick with sand, and so, scrambling down, Jacob was about to jump, holding his bucket in front of him, when he saw, stretched entirely rigid, side by side, their faces very red, an enormous man and woman.1922, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Jacob's Room
- Synonyms:
- pail
- The amount held in this container.
- The horse drank a whole bucket of water.
- A large amount of liquid.
- It rained buckets yesterday.
- I was so nervous that I sweated buckets.
- A great deal of anything.
- My new suit cost me buckets.
- We had buckets of fun.
- A unit of measure equal to four gallons.
- The part of a piece of machinery that resembles a bucket (container).
- Someone who habitually uses crack cocaine.
- An old vehicle that is not in good working order.
- Synonyms:
- banger, beater, hooptie, jalopy, wreck, crock, shitbox, rustbucket, bucket of bolts, bucket of rust
- The basket.
- The forward drove to the bucket.
- A field goal.
- We can't keep giving up easy buckets.
- [Markieff] Morris isn’t quite the post-up threat that [Enes] Kanter is, and he can play both the 4 spot and 5 spot instead of just center, like Kanter. He is capable of playing a similar way, backing defenders down in the post. He prefers getting his buckets there with a bevy of fade-aways and...2019 February 25, Brett Dawson, Fred Katz, “How power forward Markieff Morris might fit in with the Thunder”, in The Athletic
- A mechanism for avoiding the allocation of targets in cases of mismanagement.
- A storage space in a hash table for every item sharing a particular key.
Show 5 more meaningsShow fewer meanings
- A turbine blade driven by hot gas or steam.
- A bucket bag.
- Avoid bulky styles such as duffle sacks, buckets, doctors' satchels, and hobos.1989, Susan Ludwig, Janice Steinberg, Petite Style, page 46
- The leather socket for holding the whip when driving, or for the carbine or lance when mounted.
- The pitcher in certain orchids.
- A helmet.
Verb
bucket (third-person singular simple present buckets, present participle bucketing, simple past and past participle bucketed)
- To place inside a bucket.
- To draw or lift in, or as if in, buckets.
- to bucket water
- To rain heavily.
- It’s really bucketing down out there.
- Synonyms:
- bucket down, chuck it down, piss down, rain cats and dogs
- To travel very quickly.
- The boat is bucketing along.
- To ride (a horse) hard or mercilessly.
- To criticize vehemently; to denigrate.
- To categorize (data) by splitting it into buckets, or groups of related items.
- These candidates are then bucketed into a discretized version of the space of all possible lines.2002, Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi, Masayuki Numao, Rüdiger Reischuk, Algorithmic Learning Theory: 13th International Conference, page 352
- Thus, sorting each bucket takes O(1) times. The total effort of bucketing, sorting buckets, and concotenating^([sic]) the sorted buckets together is O(n).2008, Hari Mohan Pandey, Design Analysis and Algorithm, page 136
- To engage in an illegal practice where a broker confirms a client's trade order without actually executing it on the free market.
- In United States v. Ficken (N.D. Ohio) the defendant was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment after pleading guilty to charges of converting clients' funds by "bucketing" their orders.1963, United States. Securities and Exchange Commission, Annual Report of the Securities and Exchange Commission, page 138
- To make, or cause to make (the recovery), with a certain hurried or unskillful forward swing of the body.
Proper noun capitalized: Bucket
the Bucket
- Nickname for Pawtucket: a city in Providence County, Rhode Island, United States.
- ‘You really think the Bucket's a shithole, Mousy?’ ’[They should] put a toilet seat on top of this place.’1999, M. Corrente, P. & R. Farrelly, Outside Providence
- People used to call Pawtucket ‘the Bucket’. And it was a derogatory term. But you know what there are some artists who've taken that term ‘the Bucket’ and reinvigorated it and they actually sell shirts, ‘the Bucket’ shirts. They're proud of being from the Bucket2008, Jason Caminiti, Pawtucket Rising, spoken by James Doyle (mayor)
bucket meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
bucket in Hindi
- container
- बाल्टी bālṭī
bucket in Tamil
- container
- வாளி vāḷi
bucket in Marathi
- container
- बादली bādlī, बालदी bāldī
- amount held in this container
- बालदीभर bāldībhar
bucket in Urdu
- container
- بالْٹی bālṭī, ڈول ḍol
More languagesFewer languages
- bucket in Bengali
- বালতি baloti
- bucket in Telugu
- బక్కెటు bakkeṭu, బక్కెట్టు bakkeṭṭu, బొక్కెన bokkena
- bucket in Malayalam
- തൊട്ടി toṭṭi
- bucket in Kannada
- ಬಕೆಟ್ bakeṭ
- bucket in Punjabi
- ਬਾਲ਼ਟੀ bāḷṭī, ਬਾਲਟੀ bālṭī, ਟਿੰਡ ṭiṇḍ
- bucket in Gujarati
- ડોલ ḍol
- bucket in Odia
- ବାଲଟି bālaṭi
- bucket in Sanskrit
- द्रोणि droṇi
- bucket in Assamese
- বাল্টি balti
- bucket in Pashto
- ډولچه ḍolča, سلواغه salwāgha
- bucket in Tagalog
- balde, timba
- bucket in Arabic
- دَلْو dalw, سَطْل saṭl, جَرْدَل jardal
- bucket in Malay
- baldi, ember
- bucket in Indonesian
- ember
- bucket in Thai
- ถัง tǎng, กระแป๋ง, ปี๊บ bpíip
- bucket in Vietnamese
- xô
- bucket in Myanmar
- ပုံး pum:
- Sindhi
- بالٽيِ bālṭī
Examples of bucket in a sentence
- I wanted a plate of shrimp, not a bucket of chicken.
- There was a hole in the bucket, and all the water leaked out.
- If you place the snout right into the bucket, it won't spray as much.
Synonyms of bucket
27 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of bucket
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | buckets |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | buckets |
| present participle | bucketing |
| past participle | bucketed |
| past | bucketed |
Origin of bucket
From Middle English buket, boket, partly from Old English bucc ("bucket, pitcher"; mod. dialectal buck), equivalent to bouk + -et; and partly from Anglo-Norman buket, buquet (“tub; pail”) (compare Norman boutchet, Norman bouquet), diminutive of Old French buc (“abdomen; object with a cavity”), from Vulgar Latin *būcus (compare Occitan and Catalan buc, Italian buco, buca (“hole, gap”)), from Frankish *būk (“belly, stomach”). Both the Old English and Frankish terms derive from Proto-Germanic *būkaz (“belly, stomach”). More at bouk.
Words formed from bucket
- Bambi bucket
- bargain bucket
- bit bucket
- bit-bucket
- blucket
- bolt bucket
- brain bucket
- brain-bucket
- bucket and spade
- bucketball
- bucket bong
- bucket brigade
- bucket chemistry
- bucket drive
- bucket drummer
- bucketeer
- bucketer
- bucket flush
- bucketful
- bucket hat
- bucket head
- bucket-head
- bucketize
- bucketless
- bucketlike
- bucket line
- bucket list
- bucketload
- bucketmaker
- bucketmaking
- bucketmouth
- bucket naked
- bucket of blood
- bucket of bolts
- bucket of rust
- bucket of sunshine
- bucket of syrup
- bucket orchid
- bucket rendering
- bucketry
- bucket seat
- bucket shop
- bucket shopper
- bucket sort
- bucket steak
- bucket truck
- bucketwheel
- buckety
- byte bucket
- can't carry a tune in a bucket
- champagne bucket
- chumbucket
- couldn't carry a note in a bucket
- crab bucket syndrome
- cumbucket
- cunt bucket
- cuntbucket
- diaper bucket
- drool bucket
- drop in the bucket
Phrases with bucket
- bucket bag
- gin bucket
- ice bucket
- mop bucket
- pig bucket
- bucket bags
- bucket down
- bucket hats
- fire bucket
- grab bucket
- holy bucket
- jizz bucket
46 more phrasesFewer phrases
- rust bucket
- slop bucket
- spit bucket
- bucket about
- bucket bongs
- bucket heads
- bucket lines
- bucket lists
- bucket seats
- bucket shops
- bucket sorts
- honey bucket
- leaky bucket
- light bucket
- lunch bucket
- mercy bucket
- nappy bucket
- paint bucket
- scuzz bucket
- token bucket
- bucket steaks
- bucket trucks
- in the bucket
- sleaze bucket
- thrust bucket
- bucket flushed
- bucket flushes
- bucket orchids
- monsoon bucket
- bucket brigades
- bucket drummers
- bucket flushing
- kick the bucket
- Veronica bucket
- kicks the bucket
- helicopter bucket
- kicked the bucket
- kicking the bucket
- orange-peel bucket
- drops in the bucket
- ice bucket challenge
- crab bucket syndromes
- ice bucket challenges
- two tears in a bucket
- great bit bucket in the sky
- couldn't carry a tune in a bucket
Words that rhyme with bucket
Questions about bucket
- What does bucket mean?
- Bucket means a container made of rigid material, often with a handle, used to carry liquids or small items.
- What is bucket in Hindi?
- Bucket in Hindi is बाल्टी (bālṭī). See Bucket meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is bucket?
- Bucket can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce bucket?
- Bucket is pronounced /ˈbʌkɪt/ (UK).
- What is the plural of bucket?
- The plural of bucket is buckets.
Words near bucket in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bucket (page history and authors); Bucket (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-bucket.wav.
Cite this entry: “bucket.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bucket. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.