Why do folk call death "kicl the bucket"?

Question

where that expression come from ?

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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 3

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 4

Bucket had a meaning in the 16th century that equated to a beam that you hang things from. So if you were to hang yourself, you would do it from a bucket, thus kicking the bucket.

Answer 5

The term kicking the bucket has a suicidal meaning

Death, homicide, suicide in that matter

like if you want to die you stand on a bucket then put your head in a noose of a high placed object. then you kick the bucket off ultimately hanging your self and dieing

Answer 6

I never knew why folk did that. I always knew that they meant the person had "died" though.

Answer 7

When you hang yourself you are standing on a bucket and kick it out from underneath yourself.

Answer 8

well in the distant future there was a person who invented a time machine and they went back to like 1920 with a bucket of acid and they kicked it and it spilled on their foot and dissolved it and they bled to death. so bucket-kicking is linked with death.

Answer 9

Maybe there was a rattlesnake or nitroglycerin in the bucket.