kick the bucket

Word by word

kick · the · bucket

Idiomatic sense

To die, in a flippant or blunt register. Jokes, offhand plans, fiction. It treats death as a thud rather than as a grief.

It is a bad phrase for a condolence, a notice, or any room where the death is being mourned. The lightness is the content, not a decoration on top of a neutral word.

Examples

1. He kicked the bucket before anyone found the will.

   He died before anyone found the will.

2. If I kick the bucket, the plants are yours.

   If I die, the plants are yours.

Equivalents

Marks say how far the other phrase travels with this one. How to read them.

1. near

   German

   ins Gras beißen

   Same flippant register. German puts the body in the grass. English involves a bucket.

2. near

   Spanish

   estirar la pata

   To stretch the leg. The everyday irreverent Spanish.

3. near

   French

   passer l'arme à gauche

   Jocular or euphemistic. A shade more old-fashioned than kick the bucket.

4. near

   Chinese

   翘辫子

   Irreverent colloquial Chinese. Same warning: wrong at a funeral.

5. partial

   Japanese

   くたばる

   A rough verb for dying. Ruder, and more contemptuous, than kick the bucket, which can be comic without sneering. The neutral Japanese is 死ぬ, and that is a plain verb, not an idiom.

Notes

The example translations say "die" on purpose. They show the event the idiom names, in a register that would actually be usable in those sentences if the speaker were being plain. The headword is what one says when one is not being plain.

Accounts of the origin disagree. One involves a beam called a bucket. One involves a pail. Neither is adopted here.

Sources

• Standard informal idiom. Wording is original. The origin is left open.

Mentioned from

• near ins Gras beißen German