When someone dies, we hear the phrase 'he kicked the bucket.' Where did this phrase originate from?

Answer 1

There are two main theories about this one. One suggests that the word doesn’t refer to our modern bucket at all, but to a sixteenth century word that comes from the French buque, meaning a yoke or similar piece of wood. It is said that the word was applied in particular to the beam from which a pig was hung in order to be slaughtered. Inevitably, the pig would struggle during the process, and would kick the buque.

The expression is attested to in particular by a citation in the Oxford English Dictionary: “The beam on which a pig is suspended after he has been slaughtered is called in Norfolk, even in the present day, a ‘bucket’. Since he is suspended by his heels, the phrase to ‘kick the bucket’ came to signify to die” (I can’t give you a date, as the editors just say it comes from a “modern newspaper”, a rather sniffy annotation they used a century ago for sources not considered quite kosher. But it was probably in the 1890s).

The other explanation, much less credible, is that the bucket is the one on which a suicide stands when hanging himself—kick away the bucket and the job is done. I’ve even seen the story attached specifically to the sad end of an ostler working at an inn on the Great North Road out of London. Don’t believe a word of it.

Answer 2

The earliest known use of the phrase to kick the bucket is from Grose's 1785 Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, where it is glossed as:

To kick the bucket. to die. He kicked the bucket one day; he died one day.

Answer 3

when people hung themselves in the old days, they usually stood on buckets. in order to effectively kill themselves they had to stand on one leg and use the other one to "kick the bucket". The expression was originally meant for someone who committed suicide but eventually the understanding was generalized to someone who had simply passed away

Answer 4

Just did a Google search and found:
Possibly refers to people who committed suicide by attaching a rope to a beam, then standing on a bucket and and kicking it away so they would hang themselves.