When referring to dying why do we say "To kick the bucket"?

Question

Any other even stranger expressions for KTB as well

Answer 1

Good Question: I had always wanted to know the answer also. There are two beliefs to the origin of this phrase. I was amazed to find out the main reason was from the source of killing swine. See the attached link for more information. I'm not sure if I am going to use this phrase again after knowing the origin.

Answer 2

We all know what a bucket is - and so this phrase appears rather odd. Why should kicking one be associated with dying?

The link between buckets and death was made by at least 1785, when the phrase was defined in Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:

"To kick the bucket, to die."

One theory as to why, albeit with little evidence to support it, is that the phrase originates from the notion that people hanged themselves by standing on a bucket with a noose around their neck and then kicking the bucket away. There are no citations that relate the phrase to suicide and, in any case, why a bucket? Whenever I've needed something to stand on I can't recall ever opting for a bucket. This theory doesn't stand up any better than the supposed buckets did.

The mist begins to clear with the fact that in 16th century England bucket had an additional meaning (and in some parts it still has), i.e. a beam or yoke used to hang or carry items. The term may have been introduced into English from the French trébuchet - meaning a balance, or buque - meaning a yoke. That meaning of bucket was referred to in Peter Levins' Manipulus vocabulorum. A dictionarie of English and Latine wordes, 1570:

"A Bucket, beame, tollo."

and was used by Shakespeare in Henry IV Part II, 1597:

"Swifter then he that gibbets on the Brewers Bucket." [to gibbet meant to hang]

The wooden frame that was used to hang animals up by their feet for slaughter was called a bucket. Not unnaturally they were likely to struggle or to spasm after death and hence 'kick the bucket'.

Answer 3

The origin goes back to the time when meat came to the market, not in a refrigerated van, but on the hoof. The animals were killed in the market square and hung by their feet from a frame so that the blood could drain. The frame was called a "bucket beam", and, I guess, some of the animals were still having their dying agonies; some would bang against the frame, hence the expression.

Answer 4

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]

Main Entry: kick the bucket
Part of Speech: verb
Definition: die
Synonyms: bite the dust, buy the farm, cash in one's chips, cease living, croak, expire, go belly up, go to the wall, go west, meet one's maker, pass away, pass on, shove off, succumb

Answer 5

Some think it derived from Western style hanging (criminal stands on a bucket with the rope around his neck attached to a tree´s branch; the sheriff comes and kicks the bucket out from under him; he becomes hanged or ´rope borne´. Others believe it comes from 16th century English farms where pigs were tied to beams, called bucqet (from French), and when the farmer slit their throats, their feet, that were tied to these beams, ´kicked´ in protest.

Answer 6

Bucket means Beam as in a slaughter house
Animals were hung by the feet and Kicked.
Pale was used for bucket until approx 1050AD.

Answer 7

Apparently its from when people were stood on a bucket to hang. Then the bucket was kicked away and voila! One hung person.
Thats what I've been told anyway.

Answer 8

I think it refers to suicide by hanging. If you hang yourself, you need something to stand on, hence bucket. While you are standing on said bucket, you would kick it away, causing yourself to fall, and the rest is history.

Answer 9

Because when they used to hang people you would stand on a bucket and someone would kick it from under your feeet

Answer 10

I don't say Kick the Bucket. I'd say Pop your clogs.