It’s been a little while since I’ve covered a comic, so I’d like to take this opportunity to explain some really widely-used idioms people use in the US. “Bucket,” for one reason or another,is a pretty popular term in idioms despite the fact that we rarely use the word to actually describe the literal thing. It’s been like over a year since I’vehad to use the word bucket, or even seen one to be honest. But anyway, so a “Bucket List” is essentially a list of things you want to do before you die. I don’t know how many people actually make a Bucket List, but I think something similar is popular among those who realize they don’t have much time left on Earth. Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson actually made a movie called The Bucket List where the two of them play terminally ill cancer patients that escape the hospital and go do a bunch of really cool stuff like flying to the North Pole and visiting the Great Pyramids of Egypt. Such lists typically include big trips, such as visiting the Grand Canyon like in the cartoon, but some people’s might include relatively minor stuff that’s important to them personally, such as learning to swim or visit family they haven’t seen in a while. I also don’t know why it’s called a bucket list, but it could have something to do with another idiom, “to kick the bucket.” To kick the bucket is a euphemism (a word or phrase used to make something sound better) for dying. If a person has kicked the bucket, it means they have died. Again, I don’t know how this term came about, and no one else really does either. There are a couple guesses, one referring back to Shakespeare and another one to the Catholic Church, but those theories are unconfirmed at the moment. We have a lot of other expressions to refer to dying, such as: to bite the dust, to croak, to go six feet under, go the way of the dodo (an extinct bird), to move on, to go to a better place, togo to Davy Jones’ Locker (to drown at sea specifically), to lose one’s life, to pass away, to push up daisies (a kind of flower), and to sleep with the fishes (to be killed then thrown into the water). My personal favorite is: to buy the farm, or to buy it. This has something to do with a farmer with life insurance who would tell him family upon his death to use his life insurance money topurchase their farm if they didn’t already own it. I think. Not sure, though. Abit morbid perhaps, but interesting nonetheless. 本文作者：谢德彦 Ian Schade 英锐教育北京升学指导老师Ian毕业于加州大学洛杉矶分校，现在他除了在英锐帮助学生们申请美国大学之外，还在工作之余努力地学习中文和中国文化。
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 10:20:06 +0000
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