The fact that the author did not feel the need to explain it shows that it was in common usage at that time. Another very fertile subject of little wit among little wits […] is Death. Those, who think these expressions are witty, must, however, confess that they are not new; for they have been in vulgar use as long as the present generation can remember.
The word beam , in this case, denotes the transverse bar from the ends of which the scales of a balance are suspended, and the literal sense of the phrase is that one scale is so lightly loaded that it flies up and strikes the beam.
But there is nothing more than a formal resemblance between these two phrases. ORIGIN What is nowadays considered a folk etymology may well be the true origin: to kick the bucket quite possibly refers to suicide by hanging after standing on an upturned bucket.
This origin has been dismissed on the sole ground that the first and subsequent editions of Dictionary of Phrase and Fable , originally compiled by Ebenezer Cobham Brewer , give the following explanation: To kick the bucket. For example, the review of one these editions, in the Gloucester Journal of 29 th January , contains the following: How often does one use expressions very common amongst the most illiterate, the origin of which we have never heard?
And indeed, in The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure of March , an article titled On the Misapplication of Wit contains the following: Another very fertile subject of little wit among little wits […] is Death.
Like this: Like Loading Birds and the bees. MOST etymologists agree that the "bucket" refers to a kind of yoke that was used to hold pigs by their heels so that they could be slaughtered, and was particularly used in parts of Norfolk. The subsequent death-throe spasms of the unfortunate animals created the impression that they were "kicking the bucket". The derivation is either from Old French buquet a balance or the fact that the raising of the yoke on a pulley resembled a bucket being lifted from a well.
The term is known to date from at least the 16th century. The more interesting and probably apochryphal origin relates to suicides who would stand on a large bucket with noose around the neck and, at the moment of their choosing, would kick away the bucket.
Andy Parkin, Moortown, Leeds. Originally popularised by black-face minstrels, "Kick the bucket" comes, via kickeraboo dead , from the West African Ga words kekre, stiff and bo to end up , and also the Sierra Leone Creole Krio kekerabu dead.
Tony Aitman, Black Voices, Liverpool. Wonderful stuff, but he must be disabused as to the African origin of the word "jazz" at least to the extent of a "not proven" verdict. Fifty years of listening and studying the stuff has failed to convince me of any conclusive derivation.
It is a word of a distinctly dubious etymology. Most dictionaries, including the illustrious Oxford Dictionary, cautiously restrict themselves to "20th Century. Origin obscure". Occasionally one comes across suggestions that it derives from "jass" - supposedly a slang expression for sexual intercourse. A third theory refers to the Catholic practice of placing the holy water bucket at the feet of a person who has died, so that visitors could sprinkle the holy water on the body.
K 6 Thoughts. Add your thoughts Cancel reply. Meaning: someone who is competent at many things but does not excel at any of them. Example: I am very glad that my husband is a Jack of all trades ; it saved us a lot of money when it came to renovating our house. Read on. The old man down the street has kicked the bucket. All the fish in my aquarium kicked the bucket when we went on a vacation.
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