Bucket

A bucket is a container that works by surrounding things. It encloses its contents on every side except the top, which it leaves open as a courtesy, so that the contents can be got at and, in the case of outdoor buckets, topped up by the rain.^[1]

Buckets have been in continuous use for at least 5,000 years, and in that time the design has been improved exactly once, when someone added a handle and everyone stopped carrying buckets in their arms like a baby.

Holes

A bucket with a hole in it is not a broken bucket but a slow bucket. A bucket with no bottom at all is, under the Containers Act of 1911, reclassified as a tube, and may no longer be described as holding anything, including an opinion.^[2]

The bucket list

A bucket list is a list of things a bucket would like to do before it rusts. The International Pail Survey (2004) collected the bucket lists of 3,000 buckets and found that every one contained a single item, “hold something”, and that 2,940 of them had already done it and were now just waiting.^[3]

Weather

Heavy rain is said to come down “in buckets”. Meteorologists have checked and confirm that it comes down in drops, which are then collected in buckets. The phrase has the order the wrong way round, but nobody has had the heart to tell it.

See also

• Puddle – what happens when the bucket isn’t there
• Rain – fills buckets, unasked
• Empty glass – a very small, very honest bucket
• Great Fire of London – a historical occasion on which buckets were used

References

1. Pail, P. (1998). Around Things. Container Press. p. 1, all sides.
2. Containers Act 1911, s. 4(b) (“Tubes”).
3. International Pail Survey (2004). “What Do Buckets Want?”. Response rate 100%; all answers identical.