bucket
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
6 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "bucket", 6-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "bucket" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "bucket" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
bucket is aEnglishnoun. It means: A container made of rigid material, often with a handle, used to carry liquids or small items. Pronounced /ˈbʌk.ɪt/. It ranks #6,338 in English word frequency. Often confused with Bucks and burke.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | bucket |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈbʌk.ɪt/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #6,338 |
| Misspellings tracked | 9 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for bucket is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈbʌk.ɪt/. Corpus data places it at rank #6,338 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 17 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 9 documented wrong-spelling variants for bucket, with forms such as "bbucket", "bcuket", and "buccket". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "Bucks", "burke", "bucky", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English buket, boket, partly from Old English bucc ("bucket, pitcher"; mod. dialectal buck), equivalent to bouk + -et; and partly from Anglo-Norman buket, buquet (“tub; pail”) (compare Norman boutchet, Norman bouquet), diminutive of Old French b… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is bucket, spelled B-U-C-K-E-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A container made of rigid material, often with a handle, used to carry liquids or small items.
- 2The amount held in this container.
- 3A large amount of liquid.
- 4A great deal of anything.
- 5A unit of measure equal to four gallons.
- 6Part of a piece of machinery that resembles a bucket (container).
- 7Someone who habitually uses crack cocaine.
- 8An old vehicle that is not in good working order.
- 9The basket.
- 10A field goal.
- 11A mechanism for avoiding the allocation of targets in cases of mismanagement.
- 12A storage space in a hash table for every item sharing a particular key.
- 13A turbine blade driven by hot gas or steam.
- 14A bucket bag.
- 15The leather socket for holding the whip when driving, or for the carbine or lance when mounted.
- 16The pitcher in certain orchids.
- 17A helmet.
Etymology
From Middle English buket, boket, partly from Old English bucc ("bucket, pitcher"; mod. dialectal buck), equivalent to bouk + -et; and partly from Anglo-Norman buket, buquet (“tub; pail”) (compare Norman boutchet, Norman bouquet), diminutive of Old French buc (“abdomen; object with a cavity”), from Vulgar Latin *būcus (compare Occitan and Catalan buc, Italian buco, buca (“hole, gap”)), from Frankish *būk (“belly, stomach”). Both the Old English and Frankish terms derive from Proto-Germanic *būkaz (“belly, stomach”). More at bouk.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: bbucket,bcuket,buccket,bucekt,buckett,buckket,buckte,bukcet,ubcket
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for bucket
Misspelling Variants of "bucket"
Frequency rank: #6,338 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: