casser sa pipe

To die

A cheerful, euphemistic way of saying someone has died, in the same register as kicking the bucket.

Le vieux Marcel a cassé sa pipe la semaine dernière, à quatre-vingt-quinze ans.

Old Marcel kicked the bucket last week, aged ninety-five.

Turns up in 17th-century pamphlets meaning to fly into a rage, and nobody's quite sure how it drifted to mean dying instead. One unproven theory ties it to army surgeons handing wounded soldiers a clay pipe to bite on during operations, which snapped if the patient didn't make it.