July 16, 1996

kit and caboodle

"The whole-kit-and-caboodle" (spelling stolen from the Seuss pages at your very own Random House site) is a phrase whose origin puzzles many of us here at work. Can you enlighten us?

Of course. That's my job.

Kit and caboodle is simply a set phrase made up of two words that are both rare when used independently of each other. Kit is the same word as the one meaning 'a set of items for a specific purpose' (as in "tool kit"), but in this phrase is used broadly to mean 'a group of persons or things'. Caboodle is the word "boodle" meaning 'a lot; pack; crowd; large quantity', with a variant of the intensive prefix "ker-" (as in kerplunk or gazillion--the prefix appears in many forms). The entire phrase the whole kit and caboodle, as it usually appears, is therefore rather redundant.

This use of a set phrase whose elements are individually unfamiliar (and are often synonyms) has many parallels in English. One example is time and tide, "tide" being an archaic word for 'time'; another is the legal phrase without let or hindrance.

Caboodle is first found in the mid-nineteenth century and is now rarely found alone. The phrase kit and caboodle is first found later in the nineteenth century. Both are Americanisms.