bucket/pail

It seems I've always used bucket and pail, interchangeably, except for certain circumstances.

a) At a well it was always a water bucket.
b) The kids game we played was always kick-the-bucket.
c) When I worked as a mate on a boat, or on any boat, it's always a bucket or chum bucket.
d) At the tavern we'd always order a bucket of mussels or a bucket of clams, steamed...and one bar once featured a bucket of beer, five or six of those little 6 oz. bottles on a heap of ice in a bucket for a special price (course, you felt like a bit of slosh with a whole bucket of beer sitting in front of you, but, hey!...anything to save a buck, right?)
e) Kick the bucket or kicking the bucket for someone dying...never kick the pail.
f) It's in the bucket, we've got the deal made, we've got the game won, it's all sewn up....we got it made!
g) But for child's beach toys here at the shore in "our neck of the woods," it's always pail and shovel or beach pail.

And mebbe, upon reviewing all of this, there's something here about size. Maybe, in many instances,
a bucket is perceived to be larger than a pail. I don't want a pail of gold, I want a bucket of gold! (or a Pot'o'Gold at the end of the rainbow in keepin' with the season ).

I guess that's why with food items, and in the spirit of merchandising, it's always a bucket'o'butter, etc...because it sounds like more than a pail.