Meaning
Dead and buried - the garden's-eye view of the grave, where the occupant's only remaining duty is horticultural. Of all the euphemisms for dying, this one is easily the most cheerful, which is precisely the joke. Cheerfully morbid; best among friends. The related turn up one's toes to the daisies is the older, more elaborate cousin. Regional use: General English; First World War popularization.
Origin
The image is literal and lovely: daisies growing over a grave, the body beneath them feeding the flowers above - as the etymological record puts it, the phrase originated in the First World War, when the cemeteries were fresh and the humour had to match. The idiom dictionaries date the expression to around 1900 and note its First World War popularization; Eric Partridge's generation knew its cousin, turn up one's toes to the daisies, from the same soil. The dictionaries' labels tell the story - euphemistic or humorous, dead-and-buried - and the phrase has stayed the standard jolly alternative to the stark word ever since: a comfort at funerals, a gag in gangster films, and the whole premise of a certain television series about the dead who briefly return.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- push up daisies
- pushing up the daisies
- turn up one's toes to the daisies
Usage Examples
- 'If the mob ever catches him,' the inspector said, 'he'll be pushing up daisies in a municipal bed.'
- Grandfather, pushing up daisies since 1981, still votes more reliably than the living.
- The allotment holders agreed: compost heap at eighty, daisies at ninety - a fair contract.