bucket

A bucket is an open container, often with a handle, used for carrying liquids or loose materials. You might picture hauling water from a well, carrying paint, or filling one with soapy water for cleaning. At the beach, a bucket can help gather sand for a castle. But the word is bigger than the tool itself.

In everyday language, it also appears in set phrases: a "bucket list" is a list of experiences you hope to accomplish in life, while "kick the bucket" is a colloquial way to say someone has died. People may also say it is "raining buckets" to mean very heavy rain, or "a bucket of laughs" to describe something very funny.

The word "bucket" usually means an open container with a handle used to hold and transport liquids or loose items. Classic materials are metal and wood, while modern buckets are also commonly made of plastic. In use, someone might carry paint home in one, carry a bucket of apples, or pass one to a firefighter during an emergency.

The noun is also productive in figurative and idiomatic expressions. The phrase "bucket list" refers to goals or experiences you want to complete in your lifetime. "Kick the bucket" is a blunt idiom meaning to die. People also describe very heavy rain as "raining buckets." In older usage, a "bucket shop" means a questionable pawn- or investment operation, and in modern digital contexts a "bucket" may be a logical storage grouping (such as a data bucket in cloud systems).

So the word spans practical, idiomatic, and specialized uses—always tied to a core idea of collecting, holding, or grouping things, whether those things are water, data, or life goals.