Don't kick the bucket: it's got your unused cellphone minutes in it

Finishing today's roundup with breaking news from the Wall Street Journal (link): the word bucket has become the business world's favorite metaphor. A delightful front-page article describes how bucket has supplanted other terms like silo (missile connotation = bad) and basket (too feminine) as a way to express organization or sorting of people, financial figures or other miscellany.

(The Journal seemed to run more of this type of story in the past. Am I the only one who thinks its recent makeover reduced its sense of humor as well as the size of the paper?)

One consultant is asked whether European cellphone companies will adopt the term to describe allotments of minutes included in a monthly plan, as American companies already do. “'They will adopt bucket,' he says. 'That is my strong feeling.'”

metaphor, idiom, wireless, finance, Wall Street Journal