Kick the bucket

To kick the bucket is one of the many euphemisms meaning to die. Its origins are fairly gruesome!

A likely source of this phrase comes from pig farming. One method of slaughtering a pig used to involve hanging it upside down from a beam in the barn designed for the purpose and called a “bucket.” In its death throes, the dying animal would then, naturally, kick the bucket.

Bucket existed as an English word meaning ‘beam’ since around 1570, probably drawn from the Old French word buquet, meaning balance.

Another theory of the origin of kick the bucket traces the phrase to a method of hanging oneself by standing on a bucket, tightening the noose, and then kicking away the bucket.

Another suggestion is that a lynch mob would stand their victim on a bucket as they threw the rope over a tree branch before kicking the bucket away.

A similar phrase is ‘ throw in the sponge’, which has extended its meaning in some places from give in to defeat to give up on life.