Meaning
A list of experiences, places, or achievements a person hopes to complete before dying, from the idiom 'to kick the bucket'; by extension, any cherished long-term goal, trip, or 'bucket-list moment'. Informal, warm, and now near-universally understood in English. Warmly informal and so widespread it shades into cliche, especially in travel marketing. Regional use: General English worldwide.
Origin
The death-sense phrase is remarkably recent for something that feels ancient. Wiktionary credits screenwriter Justin Zackham, who says he coined it in 1999 for his own 'List of Things to Do before I Kick the Bucket', shortened to 'bucket list', and later turned the idea into the screenplay for the 2007 film The Bucket List, with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, which popularised it. A 2011 Slate column argued for earlier uses, including a 2004 book, but was corrected in 2015 after research circulated by language columnist Ben Zimmer showed those citations were misdated, leaving Zackham's account standing. Wiktionary's earliest verified citation in the dying sense is from 2 September 2006, in an interview about the then-upcoming film. Separate older senses exist, including a 1960 computing citation for hash buckets and a 1978 meetings sense for parked agenda items.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- bucket-list (modifier)
- life list
- things to do before I die
Usage Examples
- Seeing the northern lights has sat at the top of her bucket list for a decade.
- He treated the promotion less like a job change and more like a bucket-list item.
- They built the whole trip around one bucket-list destination: Patagonia.