Now, the Special English program Words and Their Stories.
From birth to death, the word kick has been given an important part in expressing human experience. The proud and happy mother feels the first signs of life kicking inside her womb. And that same life -- many years later -- comes to its end in a widely-used expression, to kick the bucket, meaning to die.
The expression to kick the bucket is almost 200 years old. One belief is that it started when an English stableman committed suicide by hanging himself while standing on a pail, or bucket. He put a rope around his neck and tied it to a beam in the ceiling, and then kicked the bucket away from under him.
After a while, to die in any way was called kicking the bucket.
Another old expression that comes from England is to kick over the traces, meaning to resist the commands of ones parents, or to oppose or reject authority. Traces were the chains that held a horse or mule to a wagon or plow. Sometimes, an animal rebelled and kicked over the traces.
The word kick sometimes is used to describe a complaint or some kind of dissatisfaction. Workers, for example, kick about long hours and low pay.
There are times when workers are forced to kick back some of their wages to their employers as part of their job. This kickback is illegal. So is another kind of kickback: a secret payment made by a supplier to an official who buys supplies for a government or company.
Kick around is a phrase that is heard often in American English. A person who is kicked around is someone who is treated badly. Usually, he is not really being kicked by somebodys foot -- he is just not being treated with the respect that all of us want.
A person who has kicked around for most of his life is someone who has spent his life moving from place to place. In this case, kicking around means moving often from one place to another.
Kick around has a third meaning when you use it with the word idea. When you kick around an idea, you are giving that idea some thought.
There is no physical action when you kick a person upstairs, although the pain can be as strong. You kick a person upstairs by removing him from an important job and giving him a job that sounds more important, but really is not.
Still another meaning of the word kick is to free oneself of a bad habit, such as smoking cigarettes. Health campaigns urge smokers to kick the habit.
This Special English program Words and Their Stories was written by Marilyn Rice Christiano.
Maurice Joyce was the narrator.
Im Shirley Griffith.
2016届安徽省高考英语二轮高效课时检测:7 信息归纳
2017届高考英语一轮专题突破解题策略课件:6 必修3 阅读理解之写作目的与观点态度题(新人教版)
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2016届安徽省高考英语二轮高效课时检测:18 说明文
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2017届高考英语一轮复习课时训练:Unit 24 Society
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2016届安徽省高考英语二轮高效课时检测:13 非谓语动词
2017届高考英语一轮复习课时训练:Unit 4 Cyberspace
2016届安徽省高考英语二轮高效课时检测:22 意图态度
2017届高考英语一轮基础知识复习:Unit 2 Cloning(新人教版选修8)
2017届高考英语一轮基础知识复习:Unit 1 Friendship(新人教版必修1)
2017届高考英语一轮基础知识复习:Unit 1 Great Scientists(新人教版必修5)
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2017届高考英语一轮复习课时训练:Unit 2 Heroes
2017届高考英语一轮基础知识复习:Unit 2 English around the world(新人教版必修1)
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2016届安徽省高考英语二轮高效课时检测:16 记叙文
2016届安徽省高考英语二轮高效课时检测:20 议论文
2016届安徽省高考英语二轮高效课时检测:21 推理判断
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2016届安徽省高考英语二轮高效课时检测:4 并列句和复合句
2016届安徽省高考英语二轮高效课时检测:23 主旨大意
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2016届安徽省高考英语二轮高效课时检测:6 词形变化
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