Word.ws English Dictionary

dry pail

dry pail noun: a small basket or bucket or hanging wet bag, usually with holes to allow for airflow and sometimes without a lid, used to store soiled cloth diapers or, very rarely, disposable diapers; a diaper pail without water or cleaning solution.

Noun

dry pail (plural dry pails)

  1. A small basket or bucket or hanging wet bag, usually with holes to allow for airflow and sometimes without a lid, used to store soiled cloth diapers or, very rarely, disposable diapers; a diaper pail without water or cleaning solution.
    • Other people have recommended a wastebasket with a tight-fitting lid. We didn't think at the time that that would provide enough odor containment; now I think that it would, for a dry pail system.2011, Peggy Wilson, The Naturally Frugal Baby, 2 edition, Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 93
    • A dry diaper pail can be either a hard pail with a liner or a hanging pail (just the wet bag or liner). A dry pail isn’t exactly dry, since you fill it with wet diapers, but "dry" refers to not adding more water.2013 April 13, Attached Mama, “Cloth Diaper Washing: Wet Pail or Dry Pail?”, in Eco Baby Steps

Verb

dry pail (third-person singular simple present dry pails, present participle dry pailing, simple past and past participle dry pailed)

  1. (rare, slang) To use a dry pail.

Forms of dry pail

Noun
pluraldry pails
Verb
third-person singular presentdry pails
present participledry pailing
past participledry pailed
pastdry pailed

Origin of dry pail

From dry + pail.

Words formed from dry pail

Questions about dry pail

What does dry pail mean?
Dry pail means a small basket or bucket or hanging wet bag, usually with holes to allow for airflow and sometimes without a lid, used to store soiled cloth diapers or, very rarely, disposable diapers; a diaper pail without water or cleaning solution.
What part of speech is dry pail?
Dry pail can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of dry pail?
The plural of dry pail is dry pails.

Words near dry pail in the dictionary

  1. dry off
  2. dry one's eyes
  3. dry orgasm
  4. dry orgasms
  5. dry out
  6. dry pail
  7. dry pailed
  8. dry pailing
  9. dry pails
  10. dry painting
  11. dry paintings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dry pail (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:

Cite this entry: “dry pail.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dry_pail. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.