If they were told to pack the whole kit and boodle, that meant take everything, we won’t be back! The kit was the issued supplies and equipment, and boodle was anything else that the soldier had acquired. (from I have also read that it was a British military phrase from as early as the Revolutionary War. As kit here means one’s equipment, to put the two together in the sense of everything that one has, equipment and personal possessions, seems reasonable. Some writers suggest the latter comes from the English buddle, meaning a bundle or bunch (closely connected with bindle, as in the North American bindlestiff for a tramp). But it’s uncertain whether it’s the same word as the one in the whole kit and boodle. This is usually suggested as coming from the Dutch boedel, “inheritance, household effects possessions”.
Sinclair Lewis used one of them in Main Street in 1920: “The whole kit and bilin’ of ’em are nothing in God’s world but socialism in disguise”.īoodle is familiar as the relatively modern US word for money illegally obtained, particularly linked to bribery and corruption. It seems that the whole kit and caboodle eventually won the linguistic battle for survival in the US because of that repeated “k” sound, though Dialect Notes in 1908 said that these other versions were still known from various parts of the country. It was also current in the US as the whole boodle from the 1830s. There are examples of similar phrases around the beginning of the nineteenth century, such as whole kit and boiling (or whole kit and bilin’) and whole kit and cargo, with the original very likely to have just been the whole kit - it’s recorded in this form in Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue in 1785. Its purpose is to denote a group of people. This word was initially used in American English in the 1830s. The word Caboodle comes from the word boodle. It’s probable that the word was originally boodle, with the phrase being the whole kit and boodle, but that the initial sound “k” was added to boodle for euphony. It can denote the kit used by a soldier, where he has placed all his personal belongings. It’s recorded in the US from the middle of the nineteenth century. It commonly turns up in the whole caboodle, meaning “the whole lot”. It means a collection of objects, sometimes of people. It’s been spelt down the years in many different ways, and these days is usually listed in dictionaries with an initial “c”.
Q From Elma Brooks: What is the source of the whole kit and kaboodle?Ī Caboodle has a complicated history. I always thought it had something to do with kittens and cabooses. My Grandfather used this phrase when I was a kid.
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