dinner pail
Definition
- Noun:
- A container for carrying a meal: A "dinner pail" is a lidded bucket or pail, typically made of metal, in which a worker carries a packed lunch or dinner to their place of work.
Usage
- The term is used to refer to the specific container used by laborers, factory workers, or other manual workers to transport their midday or evening meal.
- It is a compound noun where "dinner" refers to the main meal and "pail" refers to the bucket-like container.
Examples
- Noun:
- The factory worker picked up his dinner pail and headed out the door at dawn.
- In historical photographs, you often see men carrying their dinner pails to the mines.
Advanced Usage
- The term often evokes a historical or industrial context, associated with early 20th-century labor.
- It can be used metaphorically to symbolize blue-collar work or a bygone era of industrial labor.
- His stories were from the dinner pail era, when every man worked with his hands.
Variants and Related Words
- Lunch pail (n): A more modern or general term for a container carrying a lunch, though often used interchangeably with "dinner pail."
- Lunchbox (n): A common modern container, often made of plastic or metal, for carrying a packed lunch.
- Mess tin (n): A container used by soldiers for eating meals.
Synonyms
- Lunch bucket: A direct synonym.
- Food pail: A more generic descriptive term.
Related Idioms
- While not a phrasal verb, the concept is central to the idiom "to carry a dinner pail," which means to work at a manual labor job.
- He's been carrying a dinner pail at the shipyard for thirty years.
Noun
-
a pail in which a workman carries his lunch or dinner
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