Kick the bucket
To kick the bucket is an English idiom that is defined as "to die" in the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785).[1] It is considered a euphemistic, informal, or slang term.[2] Its origin remains unclear, though there have been several theories.
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[edit] Origin theories
A common theory is that the idiom comes from a method of execution such as hanging, or perhaps suicide, in the Middle Ages.[3] A noose is tied around the neck while standing on an overturned bucket. When the pail is kicked away, the victim is hanged.
Another theory relates to the alternate definition of a bucket as a beam or yoke that can be used to hang or carry things on.[1][4] The "bucket" may refer to the beam on which slaughtered pigs are suspended. The animals may struggle on the bucket, hence the expression.[1] The word "bucket" still can be used today to refer to such a beam in the Norfolk dialect.[5] It is thought that this definition came from the French word trébuchet or buque, meaning balance.[1][4] William Shakespeare used the word in this sense in his play Henry IV Part II where he says:[1]
Swifter then he that gibbets on the Brewers Bucket.—William Shakespeare, Henry IV Part II
A third theory suggests that the origin of the phrase comes from the Catholic custom of holy-water buckets:[6]
After death, when a body had been laid out ... and ... the holy-water bucket was brought from the church and put at the feet of the corpse. When friend came to pray... they would sprinkle the body with holy water ... it is easy to see how such a saying as "kicking the bucket " came about. Many other explanations of this saying have been given by persons who are unacquainted with Catholic custom—The Right Reverend Abbot Horne, Relics of Popery
A fourth suggests that the phrase comes from a children's game. The person who kicks the bucket loses the game.[7]
[edit] Variations
In North America, a variation of the idiom is "kick off".[8] A related phrase is to "hand in one's dinner pail", a bucket that contains a worker's dinner.[5]
[edit] References in popular culture
In the 1953 Looney Tunes cartoon Robot Rabbit, after Elmer Fudd "shoots" Bugs Bunny, Bugs says that he's "gonna kick the bucket" before literally kicking a bucket next to him. Elmer replies "Hooway! The wabbit kicked the bucket!" while doing a dance with Bugs until Elmer realizes that Bugs had tricked him.
In the film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), the character played by Jimmy Durante, Smiler Grogan, literally kicks an old bucket when he dies.
The title and theme of the movie The Bucket List (2007) is a list of things the two main characters, played by Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, wish to do before they "kick the bucket," both of them being terminally ill.
Louis Armstrong's song "Old Man Mose" is about an old man who, as the chorus repeats several times, "kicked the bucket".
The Kings of Leon's 2004 single "The Bucket" contains the lyrics "you kick the bucket and I'll swing my legs," referring to hanging oneself.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
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Look up kick the bucket in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
- ^ a b c d e The Phrase Finder
- ^ Oxford Advanced Dictionary of Current English, 4th Ed. (1989)
- ^ Terry Deary, Horrible Histories: Wicked Words p. 56
- ^ a b "Bucket." The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989.
- ^ a b Oxford Dictionary of Idioms, p. 159
- ^ "Relics of Popery", Catholic Truth Society London
- ^ Education Ask
- ^ Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, p. 787
