- Forum >
- Topic: Portuguese >
- "Meu professor bateu as botas…
47 Comments This discussion is locked.
Be careful here.
English "Kicked the bucket" literally means "chutou o balde", which is an idiom in Portuguese with a completely different meaning.
"Bater as botas" is "to die". (kick the bucket, ok)
"Chutar o balde" is to stop caring about rules, about responsibilities, or about what people say and do whatever your rebel spirit wants to.
Just make sure you don't say "knocking boots" for death in English, because it means "having sex".
I believe the explanation from the Oxford English Dictionary about "bucket" being an archaic word for what they tied pigs to during slaughter, and that the phrase "kicking the bucket" likely came from the death throes of the pig when it would kick the bucket. I prefer the more modern (even if incorrect) version, as it will help people remember it better. Imagine someone commiting suicide by sticking their head in a noose while standing on a bucket, well now imagine they kick the bucket. I'd say that they would kick the bucket (die) if they kick that bucket.
I always thought it came from when people were executed not suicide.
In english, at least the american vernacular " to kick the bucket" also means to die, lol
I'm guessing that this sentence, in Portuguese, as well as in English, is a not very respective way of saying this?
It's not necessarily disrespectful, but it's not nice and gentle and not something you want to say to a grieving person. It usually has humorous undertones.
Another (less common) British way of saying this would be to say someone popped their clogs. Which might translate better on a word for word basis with the Portuguese phrase. It's a bit impolite though.
Why don't they simply write bateu as botas = kicked the bucket. There's no need for my teacher, it just confuses things.
I put bought the farm which is the same mesning as bit the dust and kicked the bucket. They seem to have a very limited thesaurus here.
1019
"Buy the farm" is essentially equivalent to "kick the bucket" both in meaning and tone/informality; it should be accepted
i think it would also be a good idea to teach the appropriateness of these idioms. for example, this express is very crude and disrespectful way of speaking of one's passing. I wouldn't teach student's that it's right to say this in reference to others.
I agree. We need to know the proper way to say it, not just the slang. Wish DuoLingo gave context to their sentences.
Bateu is "pretérito perfeito" and batia is "pretérito imperfeito". I don't have a link but googling it will bring many good sites with clear explanations.
For those who don't understand the grammatical terms, 'bateu' = 'hit' and 'batia' = 'was hitting', as in, The boy was hitting the ball when I arrived = O menino batia a bola quando eu cheguei.
Thanks, those are familiar terms to me (or rather, obvious cognates of Spanish terms that are familiar to me), so that gives me a good idea right there.
I created some extra study material for this unit on Quizlet: https://quizlet.com/_1fci7y
Thanks! Nice work!
I did notice that you translated "for" with "it is"? Actually it is the future subjunctive tense, which implies a possibility in the future, or "ir" which means "to go" and its preposition is "se". So "(se) for" (here, 3rd person), translates into "(if) it would go/leave" (por cima do meu cadaver). I had to do some research about this, because the literal meanings help me to remember their figurative meaning. So it's awesome you made this study material, it will certainly help people.
It doesn't seem to mean 'kicked off' just hit them - sounds like his head hit someone else's boots when he fell down dead.
There is another idiom in Brazil also meaning to die: "ir para a terra dos pés juntos" (it is difficult to me to translate, but it means something like "go to the land of those with the feet put close together" and it is due to the position of the dead in the coffin). I've always thought "bater as botas" had something to do with it but I made some research and found many different theories but none of them had this connotation (actually, none of them fully convincing). The one I liked the most points out the movement a soldier does when he leaves, specially at the presence of a superior. "Bater as botas" would be the last movement before leaving.
No, but someone you don't have a close relationship since it may sound funny.
To 'kick the bucket' in English is to suicide. I believe it's from kicking the bucket out from underneath yourself when trying to hang oneself.
- 1019
I am a native speaker of English (Mid-Atlantic US, male, mid-30s) and I understand the phrase "kick the bucket" as "to die" in general, not specifically to commit suicide. In fact, because the phrase is so irreverent, I would find it odd if someone used it to mean that a person killed themselves.
Shane is right. This expression is not specific to suicide. It does comes from hanging. But it could refer to lynchings, where the person being hanged is forced to stand on a bucket to be strung up. Then the ones doing the lynching kick the bucket out from under them. Or it could come from someone who trips over a bucket, falls, and hits his/her head and dies. I have never heard this expression used for suicide. And I haven't heard any other slang for suicide, either.
- 1019
Thanks for the additional etymological info, GlennaSol! On idioms for suicide, I can think of: "to off oneself", but that construction could be extended to other people ("to off someone (else)"), so it's not specific to suicide. I have also heard that "doing the dutch" is a prison term for committing suicide, but I have never heard anyone use it.
