When Did People Start Saying “Bucket List”?
"In 2004, the term was used—perhaps for the first time?—in the context of things to do before one
kicks the bucket (a phrase
in use since at least 1785) in the book
Unfair & Unbalanced: The Lunatic Magniloquence of Henry E. Panky, by Patrick M. Carlisle. That work includes
the sentences, “So, anyway, a Great Man, in his querulous twilight years, who doesn’t want to go gently into that blacky black night. He wants to cut loose, dance on the razor’s edge, pry the lid off his bucket list!”
"Bonus cultural coincidence:
Parkour has also cropped up in several TV shows of late—most recently
Inspector Lewis (those wacky Oxford students!),
New Girl,
Happy Endings, and
Work of Art. (It was on
The Office, which usually lags behind the cultural zeitgeist—Scranton!—back in 2010.) Parkour’s origins are more straightforward. According to the
American Heritage Dictionary, it derives from the French term
parcours de combattant—literally, “combatant’s course,” or more loosely, obstacle course. It is also related to the Medieval Latin
percursus, the past participle of
percurrere, meaning
to run through or
rove."