A bucket list is a list of things to do before one dies. The phrase was popularized by the 2007 film The Bucket List, with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. Americans now cross items off their bucket lists. The screenwriter, Justin Zackham, says he coined the expression. The earliest known printed use, from June 2006, was already about his film.
Mission Accomplished
On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush spoke on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln under a banner that read “Mission Accomplished.” He said: “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”
The war went on for years. By the fifth anniversary of the speech, at least 4,061 American service members had died. In January 2009 Bush said: “Clearly, putting ‘Mission Accomplished’ on an aircraft carrier was a mistake.”
The Obameter
Just before Barack Obama took office in 2009, the fact-checking site PolitiFact launched the Obameter to track his more than 500 campaign promises. Each promise was rated as kept, broken, compromise, in the works, or stalled. A year later, PolitiFact counted 91 promises kept, 33 compromises, 87 stalled and 14 broken.
All But Dissertation
ABD, for “all but dissertation,” describes a doctoral student who has finished everything except the dissertation. The term is used mostly in the United States, and it is informal. Writing “Ph.D. (ABD)” after one’s name can be seen as misleading. Some universities give such students a separate degree, such as a Master of Philosophy.
Eagle Scout
To become an Eagle Scout, a Boy Scout had to earn 21 merit badges, 13 of them in required areas, and complete a community service project. In 2016 a resolution in the Nebraska Legislature congratulated four Eagle Scouts from Troop 17 in Gering. It noted that “only a small percentage of the boys who join the Boy Scouts of America achieve the rank of Eagle Scout.”
Close Your Rings
The Apple Watch shows a day’s activity as three rings: Move, Exercise and Stand. Users try to close all three. Apple gives awards for closing them, including a limited-edition award on Global Close Your Rings Day, April 24, 2025.
Real Artists Ship
At a retreat of the Macintosh team in Carmel, California, in January 1983, Steve Jobs told the team: “Real artists ship.” To ship is to deliver a finished product to customers. The account comes from team member Andy Hertzfeld, who wrote about it later. Quote Investigator concludes that Jobs popularized the expression.
The Progress Principle
Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School and the psychologist Steven Kramer studied some 12,000 daily diaries kept by 238 white-collar employees at seven companies. They found that, of everything that drives people at work, “the single most important factor is simply a sense of making progress on meaningful work.” Small wins were “nearly as effective as major breakthroughs.”
When 669 managers ranked five motivators, support for making progress came “dead last.”
The Save
In baseball, a save is credited to the pitcher who finishes a game for the winning team under certain conditions, for example with a lead of three runs or fewer. The sportswriter Jerome Holtzman lobbied for the statistic in 1959. It became official in 1969, the first new official statistic since 1920.
The save created a role, the closer, a pitcher who comes in to finish games. The writer Bradford Doolittle called it “the only example in sports of a statistic creating a job.”
The Punch List
Near the end of an American construction project, the contractor prepares a punch list of the items still to be finished or corrected. Contracts usually allow the owner to hold back the final payment until the list is done. One explanation of the name is that a hole was punched next to each item when it was completed.
In everyday speech, a punch list is any list of the last small tasks before a job is finished.