Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email
Answers.com

kick the bucket

 
Idioms: kick the bucket

Die, as in All of my goldfish kicked the bucket while we were on vacation. This moderately impolite usage has a disputed origin. Some say it refers to committing suicide by hanging, in which one stands on a bucket, fastens a rope around one's neck, and kicks the bucket away. A more likely origin is the use of bucket in the sense of "a beam from which something may be suspended" because pigs were suspended by their heels from such beams after being slaughtered, the term kick the bucket came to mean "to die." [Colloquial; late 1700s]


Search unanswered questions...
Enter a question here...
Search: All sources Community Q&A Reference topics
WordNet: kick the bucket
Top
Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The verb has one meaning:

Meaning #1: die (colloquial)
  Synonyms: buy the farm, conk, drop dead, pop off, choke, croak, snuff it


Best of the Web: kick the bucket
Top

Some good "kick the bucket" pages on the web:


Phrase
www.phrases.org.uk
 
 
 

 

Copyrights:

Idioms. The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.  Read more