Kick The Bucket - Origin Theories

Origin Theories

A common theory is that the idiom comes from a method of execution such as hanging, or perhaps suicide, in the Middle Ages. A noose is tied around the neck while standing on an overturned bucket. When the pail is kicked away, the victim is hanged.

Another theory relates to the alternate definition of a bucket as a beam or yoke that can be used to hang or carry things on. The "bucket" may refer to the beam on which slaughtered pigs are suspended. The animals may struggle on the bucket, hence the expression. The word "bucket" still can be used today to refer to such a beam in the Norfolk dialect. It is thought that this definition came from the French word trébuchet or buque, meaning balance. William Shakespeare used the word in this sense in his play Henry IV Part II where he says:

Swifter then he that gibbets on the Brewers Bucket. —William Shakespeare, Henry IV Part II

A third theory suggests that the origin of the phrase comes from the Catholic custom of holy-water buckets:

After death, when a body had been laid out ... the holy-water bucket was brought from the church and put at the feet of the corpse. When friends came to pray... they would sprinkle the body with holy water ... it is easy to see how such a saying as "kicking the bucket " came about. Many other explanations of this saying have been given by persons who are unacquainted with Catholic custom —The Right Reverend Abbot Horne, Relics of Popery

Alternatively, in the moment of death a person stretches their legs (in Spanish Estirar las patas means 'to die') and so might kick the bucket placed there.

A fourth suggestion is that the phrase is related to one of the variations in the children's game Tip of Kick the can.

Yet another seeks to extend the saying beyond its earliest use in the 16th century with reference to the Latin proverb Capra Scyria, the goat that is said to kick over the pail after being milked (920 in Erasmus' Adagia). Thus a promising beginning is followed by a bad ending or, as Andrea Alciato phrased it in the Latin poem accompanying the drawing in his Emblemata (1524), 'Because you have spoilt your fine beginnings with a shameful end and turned your service into harm, you have done what the she-goat does when she kicks the bucket that holds her milk and with her hoof squanders her own riches'. Here it is the death of one's reputation that is in question.