bucket

B2 · Upper Intermediate Countable noun Informal

n. a very large amount of liquid or another substance.

n. an informal quantifier denoting a significant volume, often used in the plural for emphasis.

“It was so hot during the race that he was sweating buckets by the finish line.”

“The charity received buckets of donations after the local news featured the family's difficult situation.”

B2 · Upper Intermediate Countable noun Technical

n. the part of a large machine, like a digger, that picks up dirt.

n. a scoop-shaped component of an excavating machine or conveyor system designed for material handling.

“The excavator's bucket was large enough to move a ton of earth in one go.”

“The operator carefully tilted the bucket to release the gravel into the waiting truck without damaging the vehicle's frame.”

B2 · Upper Intermediate Countable noun Sports Informal · American English

n. a successful shot that goes through the hoop in basketball.

n. an informal term for a successful field goal or the basket itself in basketball.

“He made a spectacular bucket right at the buzzer to win the game.”

“The rookie struggled to find his rhythm early on, missing several easy buckets before finally scoring in the second quarter.”

C1 · Advanced Countable noun Computing Technical

n. a place to store a specific group of data in a computer system.

n. a logical storage unit or category used to group related data points, particularly in hash tables or cloud storage.

“The software organizes the files into different buckets based on when they were created.”

“The cloud architect configured a new storage bucket with strict permissions to ensure that sensitive user data remained encrypted and private.”

B2 · Upper Intermediate Informal · British English

v. to rain very hard.

v. to rain with high intensity; almost exclusively used in the progressive form with 'down'.

“We couldn't go for our walk because it was bucketing down outside.”

“The match was eventually abandoned because it had been bucketing down for three hours, leaving the pitch completely waterlogged.”

C1 · Advanced Education Technical

v. to put information into different groups or categories.

v. to categorize or partition data into discrete sets for analysis or storage.

“We need to bucket these customers by their age and spending habits.”

“The researchers decided to bucket the survey responses into four distinct demographic groups to simplify the statistical modeling process.”