A pail is a round container with a handle, used for carrying liquids or other materials. You might know it better as a bucket. When you fill a pail with water at the beach to build a sandcastle, or carry a pail of soapy water to wash your bike, you're using this simple but incredibly useful tool.

Pails have been around for thousands of years because they solve a basic problem: how do you move water, sand, milk, or anything else from one place to another? The handle makes it possible to carry a full pail without spilling everywhere. Farmers use pails to carry feed to animals or collect fresh milk. Janitors use pails for mopping floors. Kids use small plastic pails at the beach or in the garden.

The word pail is somewhat old-fashioned. Most people today say bucket instead, though you'll still hear pail in certain phrases like “lunch pail” (a metal container workers once carried their lunch in) or the expression “a drop in the bucket,” meaning something too small to make a difference. Whether you call it a pail or a bucket, it's the same useful container that's been helping people carry things for centuries.