![]() ![]() (Prisoner-Bob! I’ll tell you the whole caboodle of the scrape! I am willing to act as a witness. These are the earliest occurrences of the phrase the whole caboodle that I have found, in chronological order:ġ-: From the account of the trial in Lockport, Niagara County, New York, of Alexander Stewart, “ a lawyer from Niagara, Captain in Her Majesty’s Militia, and has been during the past winter, the secret Agent of the Canadian Government”-account by James Mackenzie, published in Mackenzie’s Gazette (Rochester, New York) of Saturday 20 th April 1839: He appealed to the mover of this bill to say if the very description of men whom he wished to exclude from the business of auctioneering, could not come in through the door he proposed to open, and participate in this vocation? If there were men left of this description, whom the Executive had not hunted out for appointment-whether this bill was not a license to the veriest rogue and to the whole kit and boodle of them, to take up the business? take all.Ģ The earliest occurrence of the whole kit and boodle that I have found is from the account of a debate on “ the bill to authorize any citizen to become an auctioneer”, which took place at the New York Senate-account published in the Albany Argus (Albany, New York) of Tuesday 30 th January 1838: Kit, a dancing master, so called from his kit, or cittern, (a small fiddle) which dancing masters always carry about with them, to play to their scholars the kit, is likewise the whole of a soldier’s necessaries, the content of his knap-sack, and is used also to express the whole of different commodities here take the whole kit, i.e. Hooper, 1785), by the English antiquary and lexicographer Francis Grose (1731-1791): (Likewise, the whole boodle corresponds to modern Dutch de hele boel, earlier and dialectal de hele boedel.)ġ The phrase the whole kit is first recorded in A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (London: S. Here, the Dutch noun kit means home, dwelling. ![]() The form the whole kit-caboodle could also suggest this origin.ģ-: The third theory is that the whole caboodle is derived from the Dutch expression de hele kit en boedel, meaning the entire house and everything in it. This is believed to have led to the whole kit and boodle 2, which, in turn, pronounced sloppily, is thought to have led to the whole caboodle. Three theories have been put forward:ġ-: The first theory is that the whole caboodle is an extended form of the whole boodle, the second part of caboodle being boodle, and the first part being an emphatic prefix represented by ca-, ke- and ker-.Ģ-: The second theory is that the whole caboodle is a blend of two synonymous English expressions: the whole kit 1 and the whole boodle. The origin of the whole caboodle is unknown. The American-English phrase the whole caboodle means the whole group or set of people, animals or things.-Synonyms: the whole boodle and the whole box and dice.įirst recorded in the 19 th century, and found only in this phrase, the noun caboodle has occurred in various forms, such as kaboodle, keboodle and kerboodle. ![]()
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