bucket: [13] We first encounter bucket in the Anglo-Norman forms buket and buquet. It is not entirely clear where this came from, but it may be a derivative of Old English būc. The primary underlying sense of this was ‘something bulging or swelling’, and hence it meant not only ‘jug’ but also ‘belly’ (related are German bauch and Swedish buk ‘paunch’). It survived dialectally into modern English as bowk, meaning ‘milkpail’ and ‘large tub used in coal mines’. The bucket of ‘kick the bucket’ was originally a beam from from which slaughtered animals were hung; it is probably a separate word, from Old French buquet ‘balance’.
bucket (n.)
mid-13c., from Anglo-French buquet "bucket, pail," from Old French buquet "bucket," which is from Frankish or some other Germanic source, or a diminutive of cognate Old English buc "pitcher, bulging vessel," originally "belly" (buckets were formerly of leather as well as wood), both from West Germanic *buh- (cognates: Dutch buik, Old High German buh, German Bauch "belly"), possibly from a variant of PIE root *beu-, *bheu- "to grow, swell" (see bull (n.2)).
Kick the bucket "to die" (1785) perhaps is from unrelated Old French buquet "balance," a beam from which slaughtered animals were hung; perhaps reinforced by the notion of suicide by hanging after standing on an upturned bucket (but Farmer calls attention to bucket "a Norfolk term for a pulley").
双语例句
1. They didn't exactly sell bucket-loads of records the first time around.
其实，他们第一次唱片卖得并不很多。
来自柯林斯例句
2. As soon as we were inside, the rain began to bucket down.
我们刚进屋，大雨便倾盆而下。
来自柯林斯例句
3. A moment or two later champagne in an ice-bucket materialized beside them.
片刻之后，他们身边出现了一只装着香槟的冰桶。
来自柯林斯例句
4. He felt a sudden compulsion to drop the bucket and run.
