Word.ws English Dictionary

bucket and spade

bucket and spade noun: a child’s toy, consisting of a (usually plastic) bucket and spade, used for building simple sandcastles at the beach.

bucket and spade: a child’s toy, consisting of a (usually plastic) bucket and spade, used for building simple...
Image: Ross, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

bucket and spade (plural buckets and spades)

  1. A child’s toy, consisting of a (usually plastic) bucket and spade, used for building simple sandcastles at the beach.
    • And as a marker of the Edwardians, both embody the pleasure principle and have (in my view) a certain bucket-n-spade frivolity to them.2021 January 13, Dr Joseph Brennan, “Spectacular funiculars”, in RAIL, issue 922, page 54
  2. (attributive) Denoting traditional seaside leisure activities.
    • the bucket and spade brigade
    • People aren’t going on bucket-and-spade holidays any more.

Forms of bucket and spade

pluralbuckets and spades

Questions about bucket and spade

What does bucket and spade mean?
Bucket and spade means a child’s toy, consisting of a (usually plastic) bucket and spade, used for building simple sandcastles at the beach.
What part of speech is bucket and spade?
Bucket and spade is a noun.
What is the plural of bucket and spade?
The plural of bucket and spade is buckets and spades.

Words near bucket and spade in the dictionary

  1. buckeroo
  2. buckeroos
  3. buckers
  4. bucket
  5. bucket about
  6. bucket and spade
  7. bucket bag
  8. bucket bags
  9. bucket bong
  10. bucket bongs
  11. bucket brigade

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bucket and spade (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.

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Cite this entry: “bucket and spade.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bucket_and_spade. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.