bucket shop
Americannoun
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Stock Exchange. an unsound, unethical, or overly aggressive brokerage house.
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Slang. any shady commercial agency, as one dealing in illegally priced theater tickets.
noun
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an unregistered firm of stockbrokers that engages in speculation with clients' funds
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any small business that cannot be relied upon, esp one selling cheap airline tickets
Etymology
Origin of bucket shop
An Americanism dating back to 1870–75; originally a cheap drinking establishment, allegedly so called because liquor was mixed or sold in buckets
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Jesse Livermore earned his nickname “Boy Plunger” in Boston’s so-called bucket shops, which took bets on price movements without actually buying or selling shares.
From Barron's
Jesse Livermore earned his nickname “Boy Plunger” in Boston’s so-called bucket shops, which took bets on price movements without actually buying or selling shares.
From Barron's
Noticing patterns, he placed his first stock trade the following year in a bucket shop—more a gambling parlor than a brokerage.
There could be lessons in the story of 19th-century bucket shops, which allowed regular people to gamble on, but not in, the market, before rolling out to dinner in horse-drawn buggies.
From New York Times
She said she had opened Wisteria as an alternative to supermarkets and other florists with what she called “the bucket shop mentality” — premade bouquets sitting in big black buckets.
From New York Times
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
