Word.ws English Dictionary

lunch pail

lunch pail noun: a lunchbox (food container) shaped more or less like a bucket with a handle.

lunch pail: a lunchbox (food container) shaped more or less like a bucket with a handle
Image: Russell Lee, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

lunch pail (plural lunch pails)

  1. (US) A lunchbox (food container) shaped more or less like a bucket with a handle.
    Synonyms:
    lunch bucket
  2. (US, figuratively) Someone doing work that needs to be done in an unpretentious, down-to-earth manner; (originally) a blue-collar worker.
    • The work of making this world resemble one that you would prefer to live in is a lunch pail fucking job, day in and day out, where thousands of committed, anonymous, smart and dedicated people bang on closed doors and pick up those that are fallen and grind away on issues till they get a positive...2024 February 12, Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

Synonyms of lunch pail

Forms of lunch pail

plurallunch pails
alternative formlunchpail

Origin of lunch pail

From lunch + pail.

Questions about lunch pail

What does lunch pail mean?
Lunch pail means a lunchbox (food container) shaped more or less like a bucket with a handle.
What part of speech is lunch pail?
Lunch pail is a noun.
What is the plural of lunch pail?
The plural of lunch pail is lunch pails.

Words near lunch pail in the dictionary

  1. lunch lady
  2. lunch meat
  3. lunch meats
  4. lunch money
  5. lunch out
  6. lunch pail
  7. lunch pail Democrat
  8. lunch pail Democrats
  9. lunch pails
  10. lunch shaming
  11. lunch trailer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lunch 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: “lunch pail.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lunch_pail. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.