rustbucket

[ ruhst-buhk-it ]

noun

, Slang.

1. an old, run-down freighter, especially one whose hull is covered with rust.

Word History and Origins

Origin of rustbucket¹

First recorded in 1940–45; rust + bucket

Example Sentences

Duke’s shambolic, dad-joke-cracking Gabe is the source of welcome comic relief in the first half, especially when he proudly shows the family his newly acquired motorboat, a secondhand rustbucket named “Crawdaddy.”

From Slate

He displays his baby with pride — a ’72 Dodge coupe, a rustbucket of green and blue metal parked in a working-class neighborhood carved into the Caracas hills.

From Washington Post

He drives a rustbucket Oldsmobile to get to Shawnee Mission North High School, where he is a junior, or to pick up his girlfriend at a different high school.

From Washington Post

Who will save us, if not for the prison-sprung rogue and her gang of misfits in their rustbucket freighter?

From Washington Post

Part One describes the 1947 "ingathering of the exiles" in a magnificent anecdote�the fiercely exciting dramatization of an episode in which some 600 Jewish internees escape from a British camp on Cyprus, board a rustbucket called Exodus in the harbor at Famagusta, throw all their food overboard and proclaim to the watching world that they will die of starvation or even blow up the ship unless the British let them sail for the promised land.

From Time Magazine Archive