Idioms: An idiom is a phrase where the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words.

You always come across little odd sayings that we all know what they mean, but many wonder how we got them. This is my first entry in what I hope will become a long-standing series of entries.

“Kicking The Bucket”

Kick the bucket means to die.

The idiom kicking the bucket comes from a particular technique of suicide long ago. A person would tie a rope around his neck, secure the other end tightly to a branch while standing on a bucket. He would then proceed to kick the bucket out from underneath himself, thus killing himself and…kicking the bucket.

This is considered the mainstream origin, however, there is an additional possible origin to this particular idiom. This one dates back to the 16th Century. Slaughtered hogs, with their throats slit, used to be hung by their heels, which were tied to a wooden block and the rope then thrown over a pulley that hoisted the animals up. Because hoisting the block was similar to raising a bucket from a well, the wooden block came to be called a “bucket”, and the dying struggles of the hogs kicking against this ‘bucket’ supposedly gave birth to the phrase.