The whole kit and caboodle

Meaning

A collection of things.

Origin

The words kit and caboodle have rather similar meanings.

A kit - is a set of objects, as in a toolkit, or what a soldier would put in his kit-bag.

A caboodle (or boodle) - is an archaic term meaning group or collection, usually of people.

There are several phrases similar to the whole kit and caboodle, which is first recorded in that form in 1884. Most of them are of US origin and all the early citations are American. Caboodle was never in common use outside the USA and now has died out everywhere, apart from its use in this phrase.

The whole kit - the whole of a soldier's necessities, the contents of his knapsack. From Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1785.

Last edited by Bazr; 06/07/14 07:24 AM.
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