baketsu o hikkurikaeshita yō na ame lit. ‘rain like an upturned bucket’
Japanese idiom, everyday. It is raining very heavily.
Draft Not yet checked by a native Japanese speaker.
How do people use バケツをひっくり返したような雨
?
Everyday Japanese, fine with anyone, and even official: the Japan Meteorological Agency’s rain table describes 30 to 50 mm an hour (“激しい雨”, violent rain) as falling “バケツをひっくり返したように”. As a noun phrase you add だ or です (“バケツをひっくり返したような雨だ”); to describe the falling itself, switch to ように + 降る.
Also said バケツをひっくり返したように降る
バケツをひっくり返したような雨
in real sentences
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バケツをひっくり返したような雨だ。
Baketsu o hikkurikaeshita yō na ame da.
It’s raining cats and dogs.
Tatoeba, sentence by mookeee, translation by Dorenda, CC BY 2.0 FR
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外はバケツをひっくり返したような雨です。
Soto wa baketsu o hikkurikaeshita yō na ame desu.
It’s raining buckets outside.
Tatoeba, sentence by bunbuku, translation by Eldad, CC BY 2.0 FR
Where does バケツをひっくり返したような雨
come from?
Nobody has recorded where it started, and the dictionaries I checked don’t list it as a headword. バケツ is a loanword from English “bucket”, so the image can’t be very old. Japanese has much older pictures for the same weather: Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (via Kotobank) quotes 車軸を下して, “sending down axles”, from the Genpei Seisuiki (14th century). Today the bucket is official enough to sit in the weather agency’s rain table.
Mistakes learners make with バケツをひっくり返したような雨
Dropping ような and saying “バケツの雨” (bucket rain). The comparison word carries the image, so without it the phrase means nothing. Translating the English cats and dogs word for word doesn’t work either.
Other Japanese idioms like バケツをひっくり返したような雨
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?
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