mine is kicking the bucket (for english) or looking at the radishes from below (in german)
those make me chuckle sometimes
“And if they bury you ass-up, I’ll have a place to park my bike.”
Some nonsensical ones in Russian: “сыграл в ящик” (“played the box game”), “откинул копыта” (“kicked back their hooves”), and “склеил ласты” (“glued their flippers/fins”)
He bought the farm. The tragic backstory being that the man was farming on land he was still paying off a loan for and his life insurance pays for the farm for the widow (though that wasn’t even always the case).
The Dead Parrot Sketch has a few of my faves
“Gone up and joined the choir invisible” is a winner.
Brown bread: an instance of cockney rhyming slang for “dead”. Difficult to use outside of the UK.
Mortally challenged: always good in a heavily moderated or corporate environment where every negative is somehow lexically spun into a positive, no matter how ludicrous.
One way ticket to Switzerland: hopefully a soon-to-be-outdated joke about taking advantage of their more liberal assisted dying laws.
Kicked off
Left the plane of existence
Shuffled off this mortal coil
Exited the building
Please for the love of everything sacred dont say unalive
Please for the love of everything sacred dont say unalive
Deanimated.
I like “kicked the bucket” or “gave up the the ghost”. The latter I said recently and got mocked because they’d never heard it and apparently it’s “not a real saying”.
“den Geist aufgeben” it is a saying in german, it’s more used when you talk about machines tho, i would translate it to “give up the spirit”
In English we have ‘gave up the ghost’ which easily could have come from German. Also applies mostly to machinery.
I’ve always heard gave up the ghost applied to machines. I’ve never even thought about it in regards to people. Odd how it basically has the same meaning but is focused on a particular thing to me.
It is possible that I’m using the phrase wrong, I’ve done that lots haha. I always picture an old timey cartoon where the ghost rises out of the person and then returns to the body after doing something
“Gave up the ghost” is at least fine in Dutch.
Dirt nap
a favorite of my PA semi-hick family
“He’s wearing a wooden boiler suit” is a Dutch one I like.
Pushing up daisies has always been a favourite.
Also a funny and rather unique tv show
[off topic]
Medical people I know tell me that when they have to actually give the family the news they don’t use euphemisms. No ‘they passed,’ or ‘they are in a better place.’ “They died.” You have to be blunt with really shocking news.
It’s hard, but yeah, it can be really, really hard for the person you’re conversing with to not believe the best option (even if zany) about whatever you say. So if you say someone ‘passed’ they will almost immediately chuckle thinking it’s about passing gas or stool, or that they’ve been moved to post-op for ‘they are in a better place.’
It also lets you squirt out of there quicker, which is a really, really bad way to think about it, but every time I’ve tried to soften the blow it ends up being more of a ‘grab the bacon while crying’ day rather than a ‘turn to family and hold onto them’ day.
“Beyond the veil”, because it sounds poetic.
Sometimes I like to tell people that my family has “two of those subterranean breed cats”
Å parkere tøflene - to park one’s slippers.
Mine is from an old movie, The Last Starfighter. A human and an alien are discussing an attack on their base and the people killed in the attack.
Alex Rogan : You mean they’re dead?
Grig : [scoffs] Death is a primitive concept. I prefer to think of them as battling evil in another dimension.
