Which pail is different

The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Ask Question. Asked 10 years, 7 months ago.

Active 7 years, 3 months ago. Viewed 92k times. What is the difference between bucket and pail? Is there a distinction between the shape of a bucket and the shape of a pail?

Are buckets and pails made of different materials? Is there a difference between substances carried in buckets and pails? Is there dialectal variation in the use of these words? Is one of these words old-fashioned? In other words, When is a native English speaker more likely to use the word bucket? Please state the whereabouts of the speaker in question When is a native English speaker more likely to use the word pail? Improve this question.

Answer: depends on your dialect, esp. See DARE dare. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. In addition, bucket has some interesting and amusing uses in slang: In its plural form, it can be an expression of unalloyed happiness. EDIT : Taking a look through Google's N-Gram viewer, it's not hard to see why: This comparison of bucket and pail from till today shows the latter's usage diverging noticeably from the former's around the era of —, to becoming a much less popular a synonym for the former nowadays.

Improve this answer. Community Bot 1. Uticensis Uticensis Of course this analysis assumes that "bucket" and "pail" are totally synonymous in literature Case 1 must be a geographically localized colloquialism, as I've never heard it. Case 2 is a shortening of "bucket of bolts". This is mostly wrong, a bucket or a pail can be made of any material and what they are made of has nothing to do with it. Both stem from Middle English roots, and they mean the exact same thing.

In common usage they mean exactly the same thing. They are generally used regionally in different areas of the united states, and have nothing to do with social status or anything else. Please see the dictionary and the eymology of the word. Only the slang citations are accurate. Largely a thing of the past with most more recent models. What about buckets that roughly means pigeonholes?

Like the buckets inside a hash table I've never heard of these having "pails" but instead "buckets". Show 1 more comment. Bucket has a more extensive set of meanings, and can be used to describe the scoop of a dredger or grain elevator the scoop attached to the front of a loader, digger or tractor a unit of data that can be transferred from a backing store in a single operation computing slang the scoring of a goal in basketball an old boat that's in poor shape [NOAD].

Robusto Robusto k 37 37 gold badges silver badges bronze badges. The original poster asked the following questions: What is the difference between bucket and pail? Certainly not in General American, no. I have some specific citations below. When is a native English speaker more likely to use the word bucket? Here are some of them: Garbage goes in a garbage pail ; you cannot say bucket there, although you may say garbage can.

Milk goes in a pail ; you cannot say bucket there. To score, a basketball goes in its bucket ; you cannot say pail there. Jack and Jill fetched a pail of water; you cannot say bucket there unless perhaps they both were carrying the same one because it is larger.

Note, though, there was a bucket at the well. A child at the beach carries water in a colorful little plastic pail ; you could not call that a bucket. It is unclear whether examples such as the following are to be interpreted as showing the Middle English or the Anglo-Norman word: —7 in F. Smith Exped. An open-topped vessel with a hooped carrying handle, typically of slightly tapering cylindrical shape, used esp. The precise range of vessels denoted by pail, as distinct from the near-synonymous bucket, has varied over time, and there continues to be much regional variation.

As a word for a container for milk pail has long been preferred cf. Compounds 1b , and it is now frequently taken to be a container for liquids, esp. Compounds 2, lunch-pail n. Recorded earliest in pail-hoop n. Skelton tr. Googe tr. Heresbach Foure Bks. Virgil Wks. Southey Well of St. Keyne v, There came a man from the house hard by At the Well to fill his pail. Lurie Nowhere City i. Macphail Dumbarton Common Good Accts. Exercises: Bricklayers-wks. Keate Sketches from Nature ed. Dana Two Years before Mast vii.

Lewis Our Mr. Wrenn ii. Used allusively in various phrases with reference to milking. Markham Eng. Brown Compl. Farmer 19 The best sort of cows for the pail. Newby Let. Looney Papers T. Jefferson Retirement Series V. Elworthy W. Somerset Word-bk. Hardy Withered Arm in Blackwood's Edinb. Marshall Eng. People 18th Cent. Hitherto, sheep, valued as mobile dung-carts, had been bred for their fleeces, and cattle for the pail and the plough.

Older Sc. Citation pail, n. Examples As one coherent set of examples showing bucket versus pail , George R. On his head was a mock helm fashioned from an old tin bucket , with a rack of deer antlers strapped to the crown and hung with cowbells. One afternoon, while she was waiting her turn to draw a pail of water from the well, she heard the hinges of the east gate groaning. Squires tossed pails of water over cookfires, while soldiers took out their oilstones to give their blades one last good lick.

The pail comes in 13 solid colors and 5 patterns, the widest range of options of any pail sold. The NightLight also chose the Ubbi as its diaper pail pick, citing its cost-effectiveness, ease of use, and ability to take regular trash bags.

Our pick does not entirely eliminate odors from diaper changing; it will smell sometimes when you open the pail to throw away a diaper and when you empty the pail. But this is true of all the pails we tested except for the Munchkin Step , our pick for people who care about stink-blocking beyond all other qualities. The Ubbi also has some minor design issues worth noting.

Only three of the nine we tested had a foot pedal, and in spite of its absence, we still think the Ubbi is the easiest to load.

When the Ubbi is stuffed to maximum capacity, pulling out the liner can require a lot of force. Amazon reviewers have also complained of the rubber gasket that lines the edge of the lid falling out and wearing out over time, of bolts that rust when the pail is washed, and of an interior rim that catches and tears liners.

A company representative told us that in Ubbi began producing improved pails to address these issues. Last, the Ubbi is more expensive up front than most diaper pails. But as noted above, this is offset by the fact that it uses regular trash bags, and the lifetime cost of using this pail is among the lowest of all the pails we considered.

The Munchkin Step uses expensive specialized bags and requires that you force dirty diapers through a tight slot with your hand, but the Munchkin is better at controlling odors than our top pick and every other pail we tested. Part of the reason the Munchkin Step is so effective at odor control is the plastic teeth that cover the opening almost entirely. Shutting the lid—which you have to do manually, a small but irritating flaw—twists the teeth to close the bag, ensuring that smells stay inside.

The Munchkin Step further battles odor by masking stink with scented bags and a baking soda puck. Unfortunately, the Munchkin pail accepts only its own brand of refills though Munchkin bag refills do work in Diaper Genie pails.

Those proprietary refills are expensive enough to make the Munchkin Step among the costliest pails to own long term, even though the pail itself usually retails for slightly less than our pick, the Ubbi. The last is the most economical, but dozens of Amazon reviewers complain about them ripping and being less effective at odor control than the ring refills.

Increased costs aside, the proprietary refills mean the Munchkin loses out on many of the other advantages the Ubbi has. Changing the bags is not as simple as taking out the trash as is the case with Ubbi —on the Munchkin, you have to cut the tube-like sleeve, tie it off, and generally waste a foot or so of plastic sheeting in the process.

Taller people may like this added height—combined with the foot pedal, it means less bending over. However, note that though the foot pedal offers hands-free convenience, opening and closing the pail can be noisy.

Its size makes it appear more prominent in a room than other models, and, one of our testers noted, its high-gloss finish also draws attention to itself. Like the Ubbi Steel Diaper Pail, it comes out of the box ready to use. The Baby Trend Diaper Champ Deluxe is similar in design and function to our top pick, and it actually blocks smells better.

But the low price is appropriate, as this pail is smaller, less convenient, flimsier, and generally cheaper overall than our pick. To dispose of a dirty diaper, you throw it in the cup at the opening and use the handle to rotate the cup so it dumps the diaper into the pail.

You empty the pail just as you would a trash can. As with all diaper pail odor-control solutions, this cup barrier has its downsides. Because of the cup, the lid takes up about a third of the height of the pail, and none of that space is usable for holding diapers. The Ubbi does not share these flaws. The Diaper Champ Deluxe also has a tendency to tip forward when you pull on the handle even if you hold the pail down at the bottom with the foot divot as intended.

It comes in very few color options and has a fairly industrial aesthetic. As one might expect from the difference in price and materials, it feels cheaper and more flimsy than the Ubbi.

The Playtex Diaper Genie, trademarked in the US in , was one of the first products dedicated to making diaper disposal more convenient and less smelly. The Elite was a truly hands-free pail; stepping on the foot pedal flipped open the lid and the clamp doors so you could drop in the diaper. According to online reviews, it released some smells when the lid was opened and when the bag was changed, but was effective at containing odors when sitting in the room.

We could understand, then, why Amazon reviewers looking to replace a worn-out Elite pail were disappointed to find out that it was discontinued, especially because we found that the current Diaper Genie lineup does not improve on it. We did not test the Elite, just the three Diaper Genie models currently available: Complete, Essentials, and Expressions.

The design of the most popular model, the Playtex Diaper Genie Complete , addresses the issue of smell when the lid is open. It also offers hands-free disposal: The foot pedal opens up an antechamber at the top that receives the dirty diaper and then releases it when the lid is closed, so that the inside of the pail is never exposed. However, though we found that this was effective at trapping odors in the pail during our several days of testing, there are scores of complaints from Amazon reviewers that the pail did not perform well in this respect.

The Diaper Genie Complete is also far less efficient to use than the Ubbi our pick. The antechamber design dumps diapers in a vertical tower, which fills the pail quickly and inefficiently. We got only 15 size-4 diapers in before needing to empty it; in comparison, our picks all held at least 20 to 30 size-4 diapers. Also inefficient: This model like all Diaper Genie pails uses proprietary refills. The Complete required the most setup of all the pails we considered, with three pieces that needed to be assembled.

Despite a lengthy instruction booklet, we had enough trouble with assembly to call a customer service agent who was quite helpful. Even once we figured it out, though, we were troubled by how poorly all the plastic parts fit together, and dozens of Amazon reviewers complained about the cheap feel of the product and its tendency to come apart.

Some reviewers also said that the pail topples over easily the Diaper Genie Complete has an average of 3. The built-in baking soda insert on the inside of the top lid helps with this, too.

While we like how the Munchkin seals the top of the bag after a diaper has been pushed through, some parents have reported getting their hand stuck in the self-sealing mechanism as they release the diaper down into it.

The pedal makes it easy to use with a wiggly baby on the changing table. One of the first things that stands out about this diaper pail from Skip Hop is its unique shape. Unlike most pails that are round or oval, this one is rectangular—a space-saving design that allows it to stand flush against a wall or right next to a dresser or changing station.

The Skip Hop pail uses regular trash bags, a feature parents love, and features a built-in storage compartment that keeps all of your diaper changing essentials within easy reach. The bin is made of steel for maximum odor resistance.

So easy to store baby lotion, powder etc. Looking for the best items for your growing family? Add all your favorite baby products to ONE registry with Babylist. Best Diaper Pails of Best Diaper Pails of Diaper pails help keep the odor contained, so your nursery doesn't, well, stink. Babylist editors love baby gear and independently curate their favorite products to share with you.

If you buy something through links on our site, Babylist may earn a commission. Photo by carolinaaandes. Do You Need a Diaper Pail? What to Consider When Choosing a Diaper Pail While all diaper pails try to conquer the smell issue, different models offer various benefits. Here are some things to think about when making your decision: Liners: Some diaper pails require special refills, which can add up. Others let you use regular kitchen trash bags. How to get the diapers in: Most diapers pails have either a squeegee contraption you push the dirty diapers through, a trap door or a simple hole that the diaper can fall through.