[Ads-l] "kick the bucket"--quite speculative

[Stephen Goranson]

The earliest printed use I know about --provided by Peter Morris on this list--is from 1774.*
"Kick the bucket" has an emphatic, maybe vulgar sound (compare in sound, though
not sense, "kick butt.") There are several published explanations of "kick the bucket."
Perhaps we can agree they are unsatisfactory.

In the rough colonial American retelling of The Aeneid book 4, Juno sends Iris to fetch
lock of hair from Dido, who then "kick'd the bucket,"
and, as we know, nonetheless, her soul proceeded to Hades.

In some Greek philosophy, the body is a prison of the soul (and, incidentally,
bucket, admittedly much later, can mean prison). At death the soul leaves the body,
a description attested in contemporary texts.

Said roughly, the soul kicks the body?

Stephen Goranson

*
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=08FgAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA94&dq=kick+bucket&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDIQ6AEwA2oVChMItdb-kI_1xwIVKZ3bCh0tDQsQ#v=onepage&q=kick%20bucket&f=false
or in Eighteenth Century Collections Online (Gale)

WorldCat:
The story of Æneas and Dido burlesqued :
from the fourth book of the Æneid of Virgil ...

Rowland Rugeley;  Robert Wells

1774
English Book xvi, 94 p. ; 16 cm. (8vo in 4s)
Charleston [S.C.] : Printed and sold by Robert Wells.



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