dinner pail
- noun
- /ˈdɪnər peɪl/
- US
:
tupper
- My back would be hurting by dinnertime at school, so I'd find some reason to carry my dinner pail home then and to stay through the afternoon to help Daddy with something.
Examples
-
She packed her dinner pail with leftovers from last night's meal before heading to the factory.
-
Every worker took their dinner pail to the site, filled with a sandwich and fruit for lunch.
-
He carried a sturdy dinner pail filled with a warm stew to share with his colleagues at work.
Synonyms
26
1.0
A round container with a handle used to carry water or other things
15
1.0
A container for carrying food to eat at work or school
3
2.5
A box with a handle for carrying lunch to work or school
A container that workers use to carry their lunch or dinner to work
A metal container used to carry a hot homemade lunch
How Insulated
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and transparently derived from combining 'dinner' (a meal) with 'pail' (a handled container): it denotes a container for carrying a meal. This noun–noun composition follows normal English compounding patterns and is cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Dinner pail comes from the clear picture of a worker carrying a metal pail with their dinner to work each day. So, it means 'a small container a worker uses to carry lunch'.