what is a "think bucket?"

May 20, 2018 6:11 PM

in the BBC show killing eve, s1e2, frank says to eve, "No. I was just tired of you piping up with your theories any time there was a snip of conspiracy in the air, you tiresome think bucket"

i've tried searching with no luck, and this is something i am normally not bad at.

what is a "think bucket?"

posted by zippy to Writing & Language (14 answers total)

Response by poster: ... and, for bonus points, what was its origin / first use?
posted by zippy at 6:23 PM on May 20, 2018

I would tend to assume that it just means someone who overthinks things to a tiresome degree, and that the phrase was made up by the writers of the show for that line. Is there a reason you think otherwise?
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:28 PM on May 20, 2018 [6 favorites]

According to a google search, it's a digital marketing company, and also this question. That's it, as far as I can tell, so I second that the writers made it up - or, at least, any earlier uses unrelated to the marketing company have been sparse enough to not make it to the internet.
posted by rtha at 6:49 PM on May 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: meant as a play on think tank?
posted by eeek at 7:04 PM on May 20, 2018 [8 favorites]

It's a joke, meant to evoke a bucket that has too many thoughts in it so it's slopping around. I'd expect that kind of phrase to be made up whole cloth rather than be a quote of someone else. UK games sites rockpapershotgun and eurogamer do it all the time, for e.g.
posted by Sebmojo at 7:38 PM on May 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: "Put that in your thinkbucket and slosh it around a bit" -- from a 1946 railroad union magazine.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 9:46 PM on May 20, 2018 [8 favorites]

Could it have been "tiresome thick bucket"? Because that sounds more British, and makes more sense (to me).
posted by seasparrow at 10:14 PM on May 20, 2018

Best answer: In the UK it's fashionable and funny to invent insults, so the term might never have been used before in that context.

One trick is to combine a rude word, or part of a known rude euphamism, with something relevant and not rude. I think that might have happened here...

Some Trump related examples from Scotland -

"these follow the formula of single-syllable expletive insult + trochee, or a two-syllable word where the first sound is stressed, like puffin or womble"
posted by BinaryApe at 10:35 PM on May 20, 2018 [10 favorites]

Best answer: BinaryApe has it. This type of expression is very familiar to (cliché-weary) British comedy audiences, even if the specific phrase is a new(ish) coinage.

If you want to trace the sense, to me it descends straight from 'thinktank'. A bucket is a rather utilitarian and unglamorous object. Hence...
posted by Ted Maul at 1:21 AM on May 21, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: And a bucket is also smaller capacity than a tank ...
posted by tilde at 2:17 AM on May 21, 2018 [5 favorites]

Yea, I'm groking it as a British equivalent to douche-canoe.

I'm imagining it spoken by its writer, the marvellous Phoebe Waller-Bridge and its making me grin.
posted by Ness at 8:31 AM on May 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Could also be related to the insult cum-bucket.
posted by Jane the Brown at 9:56 AM on May 21, 2018

Could also be related to the insult cum-bucket.

That seems unlikely.
posted by Sebmojo at 3:27 PM on May 21, 2018

Best answer: Random Brit insult makes the most sense but wanted to add think bucket as brain from this excerpt from a 2017 apparently self-published novel called One Broken Spur from 2017 to the Think Bucket canon (punctuation is true to original):

Ken said "This is it boys when you want to catch a thief you must think like a thief, I'm going to get the gears working in my think bucket working tonight, try to have some good idea's by tomorrow morning, I'm going to catch me a rustler. I'm going to give somebody a world of hurt, if I can have my way, I'll put one of the silver bullets from my shell belt into his think bucket."
posted by Bella Donna at 3:00 PM on May 22, 2018 [1 favorite]