Bucket

How to spell bucket

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce bucket

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bucket mean?

1. nounAn open, usually round container with a handle, used for carrying or holding liquids or other materials.
2. verbTo rain very heavily, or to move fast in large quantities.

Bucket in a sentence

• noun

  She filled the bucket with warm soapy water before washing the car.

• verb

  The rain began to bucket down just as the match started.

• noun

  The leak forced him to place a bucket under the dripping pipe.

• verb

  By midnight it would bucket down for hours across the valley.

Where does bucket come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Bucket comes from the Anglo-Norman buket, a small tub or pail, which is generally traced back to the Old English buc, meaning a belly, a pitcher, or a bulging vessel. The underlying idea was something rounded and capacious that could hold liquid, much like the swelling shape of a belly. The word settled into English by the 1200s and kept its plain, practical meaning of an open container with a handle for carrying water or other materials. Over the centuries it picked up vivid figurative uses, from heavy rain that comes down by the bucketful to the much later idiom 'kick the bucket'. The spelling is reliably phonetic, so the only mild trap is the single 'c' followed by 'k' and the soft, easily slurred second syllable.

How the word is built

• bucket (from Old English/Anglo-Norman buket: pail) treated as a single root; no productive prefix or suffix