Idiom
Kick the bucket
To kick the bucket is a casual, joking way to say someone dies, or that a machine finally stops working.
How people use it
It is a humorous way to talk about death, so it softens the subject but can sound careless. People use it about themselves ("before I kick the bucket") or about old machines ("my laptop finally kicked the bucket"), not about someone a listener is mourning. The phrase bucket list, meaning things you want to do before you die, grew out of it and became popular in the 2000s. It is informal; in serious contexts say died or passed away.
Examples
- Our old washing machine finally kicked the bucket after fifteen years of loads.
- Grandpa jokes that he wants to see the northern lights before he kicks the bucket.
- My phone kicked the bucket the night before my trip, so I had to buy a new one.
Where it comes from
It appears in a 1785 dictionary of slang, so it is at least that old, but no one knows for sure where it came from. One leading theory points to an old meaning of bucket: a wooden beam used in butchering animals. Other explanations exist, but the records do not clearly support any single one.
Check yourself
1. If your car kicks the bucket, what has happened?
Answer: It has stopped working for good. Kick the bucket means die, or for a machine, stop working completely.
2. When is kick the bucket a poor choice of words?
Answer: Talking to a friend whose relative just died. The phrase is jokey, so it can sound unkind to someone who is grieving.
Similar idioms
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