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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.
Me too... but older usage may have been different:
Jack and Jill
Went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water
Come to think of it, why would one seek water *atop the hill? Wouldn't the water, whether in well or rivulet, typically be at the lower ground?
Both words come from Old English
- Pail from pægell, which meant "gill" (a small liquid measure - 1/8 pint [c.f.Middle Dutch pegel = measure])
- bucket is from Middle English or Anglo French and is a "container for drawing, holding or carrying water"
So far as English usage is concerned, it probably depends on where you were brought up as to what is right:
As to American usage - I've no idea! They have taken English and preserved some bits we've forgotten and which would by now be lost, and converted some bits which we think would have been well left alone!
we've forgotten and which would by now be lost, and converted some bits which we think
would have been well left alone! "
I don't know, RC. For instance, I could easily make a bucket, just as the oltimers had to make their own.
No way could I make a pail.
Rush the growler : to go to the local bar or beer tap and fill a round lunch pail with draft beer. In olden days, fathers would often send their kids to rush the growler. See growler.
No way could I make a pail.
I'm sure you could make a pail imitation of a bucket, Dr Bill?
I often drive past a large poster advertisement for an Edinburgh "heavy drinking - late night establishment". It says in large letters "big jugs, well hung". I can only assume that it relates to the way that the pitchers (to USn's) are arranged over the bar.
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