bucket

Pluralbuckets

Formsbuckets, bucketing, bucketed

1. 1
   containernouncountable

   A container made of stiff material, often fitted with a handle, for carrying liquids or small items.

   The farmer hung the empty bucket on a nail by the barn door.

   Painters on the scaffold hauled their buckets up on a rope.

   Similarpail

   Note

   Two lines of descent meet in this word: Old English bucc, "bucket, pitcher", which lives on in dialect as buck, and Anglo-Norman buket, "tub, pail", a diminutive of Old French buc, "abdomen", so the vessel was once a little belly. Pail is its closest synonym.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   The amount of liquid or other material that a bucket holds.

   It took twelve buckets of gravel to level the garden path.

   He worked his way through a whole bucket of popcorn before the trailers ended.

   Similarpail

3. 3
   nouncolloquialcountableplural

   A very large amount of liquid, such as rain or sweat.

   The forecast says it'll rain buckets all weekend.

   By mile twenty, the runners were sweating buckets in the heat.

   Note

   It almost always works in the plural and with no article, straight after a verb of pouring or flowing: it rained buckets, I sweated buckets. A single bucket of water is a measured bucketful, not a downpour, and the same downpour can be put as a verb: it was bucketing down.

4. 4
   pour downverbcolloquialintransitive

   To rain heavily.

   Forecasters warned that it would bucket down all afternoon.

   It had been bucketing down for hours, so the game was called off.

   Similarpour, teem, pelt, sheet

5. 5
   lots of anythingnouncolloquialcountableplural

   A large amount of anything, whether money, fun, or something else.

   The renovation ended up costing buckets, far more than we had budgeted.

   She has buckets of talent but very little patience.

   Similarloads, lots, heaps, tons, oodles

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A part of a machine that is shaped like a bucket, such as a scoop or vane.

   The operator lowered the excavator's bucket and dragged it through the clay.

   A chain of steel buckets carried grain up the elevator to the top of the silo.

   Similarscoop

7. 7
   basketball scorenouncolloquialcountable

   In basketball, a field goal; a basket scored in open play, not from the free-throw line.

   The rookie got his first pro bucket on a fast-break layup.

   Their defense keeps handing the other team easy buckets in transition.

   Similarbasket

   Note

   Players count, trade and give up buckets like points, and easy buckets are the ones a defense can least afford to keep allowing. The word belongs to the casual talk of the court; on the stat sheet and in formal writing, the same basket is a field goal.

8. 8
   basketball hoopnouncolloquialcountable

   In basketball, the basket: the hoop and net that players shoot at.

   The point guard kept attacking the bucket instead of settling for jump shots.

   Their center rarely strays more than a few feet from the bucket.

   Similarbasket, hoop, rim

   Note

   Here the bucket is a place rather than a score: players drive to it, attack it and fight for position near it, while the made-shot meaning is something a team scores or gives up. In the rulebook and in formal writing, the place is simply the basket.

9. 9
   old carnounslangcountable

   An old vehicle, especially a car, that is in poor working order.

   I can't believe that bucket passed inspection.

   He's still driving the same bucket he bought in college, dents and all.

   Similarclunker, wreck, jalopy, banger, beater

   Note

   Slang for a worn-out car is a crowded field, and this word keeps company with jalopy, beater, banger, hooptie and crock. Rustbucket is the fuller form and spells out what bucket only hints at. It belongs to casual talk; a formal report would call the same vehicle old or unreliable.

10. 10
    sort dataverbtransitive

    To organize data into groups according to what the items have in common.

    The pipeline buckets incoming requests into one-minute windows before counting them.

    Analysts bucket customers by age so the chart stays readable.

    Similargroup, bin, sort, categorize, classify

    Note

    Data work uses it for a first, rough pass: values are scattered into groups by range or key, each group is handled on its own, and the results are joined. Bucket sort runs exactly that way, and when each bucket is small the whole job takes linear time, O(n). The verb is often passive, as when candidates are bucketed into a discretized space.

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