bucket brigade

English

a bucket brigade and a fire engine, 1911

Noun

bucket brigade (plural bucket brigades)

2. The long line of people, in a primitive firefighting technique, who pass buckets of water hand-to-hand from the nearest water source to the site of a fire, in an attempt to douse it.

   Synonym: human chain

4. (figurative, by extension) Any process in which something is passed along a chain.
6. (electronics) A discrete-time analogue delay line that moves a signal along a line of capacitors, one step at each clock cycle.

Related terms

• fire brigade

Translations

line of people who pass buckets of water

• German: Eimerkette (de) f, Löschkette f

any process in which something is passed along a chain

electronics: discrete-time analogue delay line

• German: Eimerkettenspeicher m

See also

• douser

Further reading

• “bucket brigade”, in Merriam-Webster.com Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “bucket brigade”, in Collins English Dictionary, 2011–present.
• bucket brigade on Wikipedia.Wikipedia