bucket shop

1. A fraudulent brokerage operation in which orders to buy and sell are accepted but no executions take place. Instead, the operators expect to profit when customers close out their positions at a loss.

2. A business, such as a travel agency, that buys unsold tickets and resells them at a discount.

[From bucket shop, a saloon selling small amounts of liquor in buckets, from its resemblance to the forerunner of such brokerage operations, which dealt in small units of stocks and commodities.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

bucket shop

1. (Stock Exchange) an unregistered firm of stockbrokers that engages in speculation with clients' funds

2. (Commerce) chiefly Brit any small business that cannot be relied upon, esp one selling cheap airline tickets

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

buck′et shop`

Informal. an overly aggressive brokerage house, esp. one that sells low-priced, highly speculative stocks by telephone.

[1870–75, Amer.; orig. a cheap drinking establishment]

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun	1.	bucket shop - an unethical or overly aggressive brokerage firm brokerage, brokerage firm, securities firm - a stock broker's business; charges a fee to act as intermediary between buyer and seller
	2.	bucket shop - (formerly) a cheap saloon selling liquor by the bucket tap house, tavern - a building with a bar that is licensed to sell alcoholic drinks

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To get to this point, Gilin's gloves underwent an extensive design and testing process, including exposure to real-world use by workers at a number of industry players, such as Kirkland Lake Gold and The Bucket Shop.

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For the next five years we would be lumbered with a bucket shop Boudicca with a dodgy line in sales patter.

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There were two million passengers a year then and BMI was trying hard to be the third force in bucket shop airline services competing with Easyjet and Ryanair.

Buying or selling... the secret of a good deal is in the timing

A shame, because had the likes of Belly of the Beast, Iceman, Fury of Chonburi, Love on the Dole and Bucket Shop been excised from the track list, we may have been left with the return we'd dreamed of.

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Which, in English, means there is a 1 in 300 chance that it was your tax money that was sent to pay off the bookie at the bucket shop.

The way it was is the way it is with big bankers

This company was no bucket shop but a major player in the travel industry and the impact will be felt beyond those directly caught up in the collapse.

VOICE OF THE DAILY Mirror: Execs are winging it

But the peeling green paint on the shabby shopfront of Makkah Travel in Pollokshields concealed the tiny bucket shop's status as a multi-million-pound money laundry for Scotland's richest gangsters.

TRAVEL AGENCY LAUNDERED pounds 10M IN A YEAR; THE ICEMAN UNMASKED: THE MONEY

That sounds august, but this is really a leftwing bucket shop using Yale's sponsorship to achieve antiwar policy goals via lawsuit.

U.S. editorial excerpts -6-

First there was the "bucket shop." These operations sprouted by the hundreds during the great bull market of the 1920s.

Rolling the dice. (Strategies)

On the contrary, Roger Tallon's urbane interiors, with their generous high backed seats and restrained vocabulary of soft leather and grey flannel, seem to be trying to provide an experience as far removed from the indignities of bucket shop air transport as possible.

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His other novels include The Bucket Shop (1968; U.S.

Waterhouse, Keith (Spencer)