No, not quite…
According to Michael Rennie, in an interview on (IIRC) Entertainment Tonight back in the '80s, it means “Gort, come and get me.”
There was a brief period in the mid-90s when you could not run past certain people without them shouting “RUN, FORREST!”
I also remember encountering “kick the bucket” for the first time while watching It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World with my family at the theater. I was about six years old then—in 1963—and my dad explained the phrase to me. That was my favorite movie for a long time. I could never remember how many “mads” were in the title. I recall tacking on ~ 15 “mads” when telling friends about it.
Know it. Don’t use it.
I know it but I cannot think if anyone I know who would recognize it. Maybe my brother…maybe.
Means don’t kill everyone…chill out.
While that film is indeed a comedy masterpiece, the term is far older- The idiom first appeared in Francis Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue in 1785.
It is from When the Earth Stood still. In means “stop” more or less, iirc.
I am fairly sure we used the phrase ‘bucket list’ in the UK before 2007, but I can’t find any citations.
‘Kick the bucket’ is (or has been in the past) a commonplace phrase, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the term ‘bucket list’ originated here.
There were some mentions of the term before the film, but not exactly in line with the idea of having a list of things to do before you die. More or less the Film created that precise meaning. It came from “kick the bucket” it seems.
Well, we used it literally in the same sense as the movie, which I have not seen, and don’t think I’ve even heard of.
Hi Rivkah. The lead track of Steely Dan’s 2000 album “Two Against Nature” was Gaslighting Abbie. Steely Dan was a group with major hipster influence, and the album was their first in 20 years - it won four Grammys, including best pop vocal album.
I was unfamiliar with the concept of gaslighting, and had to look it up to understand the song. So, I’ve assumed that was what relaunched the phrase, although it took most of a decade to reach major cultural dispersion.
Gaslighting came from a 1938 play and then a 1940/1944 movie. Not sure it was ever “relaunched.”
I was wondering about it because Jim Rockford says the phrase in an episode of The Rockford Files when he’s threatened by an oversized goon. That’s the only place I’ve heard it used outside of The Day the Earth Stood Still. I didn’t get the joke at first because I hadn’t seen the classic movie yet, and I suspect a lot of people didn’t get it either.
I’ll go with Michael Rennie’s translation of it. If anybody knows what it means, it would be he.
Of course, it gained a lot of traction in regard to politics over the last ten years.
It was never actually used in the play or film, was it? I think it acquired the meaning it has now after someone who had seen the movie coined it.
There must be a technical term for a word being inspired by a work of drama or literature, but I’ve no idea what it is.
So was “cocooning,” i.e., stocking up with warm clothing, hot chocolate, and good books to read while you’re hibernating for several months.
No, and in any event, the play was called Angel Street. The 1940 version of the film was terrible, and about its only contribution was the title, albeit, it was 2 words, not one; the 1944 film, with 1 word, was ripe for verbing-- which is to the point-- the lights, and the gas are nouns in the movie.
I’m not sure the lights are ever referred to as “gas lights,” because the movie is set at a time when they are the most common kind of light, the only other kind I can think of being candle light. Until electric lights had mostly supplanted gas lights, would you refer to gas lights as such.
“Verbing.” I like that! 
I know it, but I always mess up the last word. I don’t think it will be a problem.
"‘Gas Light’ is a 1938 thriller play, set in 1880s London…
…it has endured through an impressive list of incarnations[1] most notably Five Chelsea Lane (1941 American play – renamed for Los Angeles production), Angel Street (1941 American play – renamed again when Los Angeles production transferred to Broadway), and Gaslight (1958 Australian television play)…
The play was adapted to the big screen as two films, both entitled Gaslight—a 1940 British film, and a 1944 American film directed by George Cukor, also known as The Murder in Thornton Square in the UK."
—Gas Light - Wikipedia
In the context of the film, it seems to mean: Klaatu is down, go find him, bring him back to the spaceship and raise him from the dead.
Which is basically what Michael Rennie said.