Idiom of the Week—“Kick the Bucket”
This is a pretty common idiom, so it’s hard to believe we haven’t addressed it yet. But I went back and checked the archives, and we haven’t explained “kick the bucket” yet, so here we go. To “kick the bucket” means to die, and was the inspiration behind the title of the recent movie “The Bucket List”, which refers to a list of things you want to accomplish in your lifetime before you die (or, “kick the bucket”).
The link between buckets and death was made as early as 1785, when the phrase was defined in Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue as: "To kick the bucket, to die." As we have found with a lot of idioms, there are multiple theories as to the origin of “kick the bucket”. Here are the two most popular:
1. The Suicide/Execution Theory
One theory is that the phrase originates from the notion that people hanged themselves (or were hanged by a mob or posse) by standing on a bucket with a noose around their neck and then kicking the bucket away (or having it kicked away by someone else). There are no citations that relate the phrase to suicide and, in any case, why a bucket instead of, say, a chair or a crate or a rock? This theory, although popular doesn't have a lot of evidence to support it.
2. The Butcher Theory
This theory has a little more historical credibility. It seems that in 16th century England, the word “bucket” had an additional meaning (and in some parts of England, still carries this meaning. The work “bucket” was used to refer to a beam or yoke used to hang or carry items. The term may have been introduced into English from either the French “trébuchet“, meaning a balance, or “buque“, meaning a yoke. Many of you are probably thinking right now, “Wait a minute. Didn’t Shakespeare use the term ‘bucket’ in reference to a yoke in his play Henry IV Part II, in 1597?” Well, as a matter of fact he did. Here’s the citation: "Swifter then he that gibbets (or hangs) on the Brewers Bucket." Over time, the wooden frame (or yoke) that was used to hang animals up by their feet for slaughter came to be called a bucket. As you can imagine this was a rather messy affair, and it was not unusual for the animals to put up a struggle during the process. In fact, it was pretty common for the animals to undergo a violent spasm after death and quite literally 'kick the bucket'. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how this phrase could make the leap from being applied to slaughtered animals to being applied to expired human beings.
