Definition

1. Noun:
   • A pail in which a workman carries his lunch or dinner: A portable container, typically a metal pail or bucket, used by a laborer to transport a meal to their place of work.

Usage Examples

• Noun:
  • The miner grabbed his dinner bucket and headed into the shaft.
  • In the old photographs, you can see the factory workers each holding their dinner buckets.

Advanced Usage

• Historical/Regional Usage: The term "dinner bucket" is often associated with early 20th-century industrial labor, particularly in mining, logging, and factory work. It evokes a specific historical and socioeconomic context.
  • The museum exhibit on the steel mill included a typical worker's dinner bucket from the 1920s.

Variants and Related Words

• Lunch pail (n): A more common modern synonym for a container carrying a meal to work or school.
  • The child was excited to use his new superhero lunch pail.
• Dinner pail (n): A direct variant with identical meaning to "dinner bucket".

Synonyms

• Lunchbox: A rigid container, often rectangular, for carrying a meal.
• Mess tin: A metal container used by soldiers for eating.

Related Phrases

• To carry a dinner bucket: An idiom meaning to be a manual laborer or blue-collar worker.
  • He came from a family where everyone carried a dinner bucket.

Noun

1. a pail in which a workman carries his lunch or dinner