verb phrase🎓 English idiom

kick the bucket

to die

What it means

An informal and somewhat humorous way to say that someone has died. Because it is light-hearted, it is usually avoided in solemn or sensitive situations.

Examples

  • He joked that he wanted to travel the world before he kicked the bucket.
  • The old car finally kicked the bucket after twenty years of service.
  • She has a long list of things to do before she kicks the bucket.
  • Legend says the haunted house's owner kicked the bucket a century ago.

Where it comes from

An 18th-century slang phrase of disputed origin; one theory links "bucket" to a beam from which slaughtered pigs were hung, another to kicking away a bucket in a hanging.

Related idioms

#hit the sack#go down in flames#hit rock bottom#under the weather

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