The idiom “kick the bucket,” meaning to die, does not originate from the concept of kicking a bucket out from under one’s feet. It has to do with an older meaning of bucket that refers to the wooden beam often found in a barn roof, where an animal carcass might be hung. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Origin of Kick the Bucket”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Joe in South Burlington, Vermont.
Hello, Joe, how you doing?
I’m doing well, thank you, and you?
Excellent.
What’s on your mind, Joe?
Well, I’m wondering about the origin and propriety of the saying that a person has kicked the bucket when the person has died.
I sense that the expression is not a solemn regard for the deceased.
The expression is commonplace in the vernacular where I live in Vermont, and I wonder whether this is a universal expression or peculiar to us in northern New England or what the scope of this expression is.
I’d say it’s quite widespread, wouldn’t you, Grant?
Yeah, it’s all over. It’s kind of like bite the dust, just so universal.
Television and books and movies have just made these things have no regional component at all.
You will probably be surprised to find that the bucket in kick the bucket isn’t the bucket that you’re thinking about.
It’s not the bucket that you might carry water or stones in.
Instead, it’s another bucket, a different word altogether that refers to a beam, say in a roof of a barn or a house or a shed.
In this particular case, it’s the beam on which you would hang the carcass of an animal when you would slaughter it.
And it comes from a different French word than the other bucket.
So it’s a very unusual, a little rare.
Apparently in parts of Norfolk in the UK, they still say this particular bucket to refer to this type of beam.
But when you would slaughter an animal, they might kick in the throes of death and literally kick this beam known as a bucket.
Yeah, they’d be hung upside down for the blood to drain.
That’s right.
And what’s really interesting about this is it kind of goes against the language historian’s general belief that anytime something has such a pat story to it, it’s probably false.
In this particular case, it’s the beam. It has nothing to do with the metal pail with a handle that you might carry water or milk or something else in.
Well, you’ve educated me.
Well, we’re glad to help.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Joe. Really appreciate it.
Thanks a lot for calling, Joe.
Thank you. Take care.
Okay. Bye now.
So kick the bucket falls firmly into this class of euphemisms that we have for difficult subjects.
There’s a quote by the writer Quentin Crisp that I like.
He says euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.
Diplomatic cologne.
Yeah.
I like that.
But we do this in order to avoid feeling uncomfortable, right?
Sure.
So it might be a little flippant to say kick the bucket, but on the other hand, we don’t have to say he died.
Right.
We do that weird thing where we whisper a word when it’s difficult.
Right.
We do.
And it’s done in so many different languages.
There are all kinds of euphemisms in other languages.
There’s one in Dutch that translates as he turned the little corner.
Oh, the little corner.
Is that like side the little death?
No.
No, no, quite different.
Quite different.
Or in German, you can exhale life or close the curtains.
There are all kinds of these.
It’s going to be curtains for you, kid.
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