dinner pail

Thân thiện

A worker carries his dinner pail to the construction site.

Definition

1. 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.

Học thuật

Noun

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

Từ đồng nghĩa

• dinner bucket