kit and kaboodle
In case you were wondering...have heard this
so many times and was just wondering about it
myself:
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[Q] From Elma Brooks: ³What is the source of the whole kit and
kaboodle?²
[A] Caboodle has a complicated history. Itıs been spelt down the years
in many different ways, and these days is usually listed in
dictionaries with an initial ³c². It means a collection of objects,
sometimes of people. It commonly turns up in the whole caboodle,
meaning ³the whole lot². Itıs recorded in the US from the middle of the
nineteenth century. Itıs probable that the word was originally boodle,
with the phrase being the whole kit and boodle, but that the initial
sound ³k² was added to boodle for euphony.
There are examples of similar phrases around the beginning of the
nineteenth century, such as whole kit and boiling (or whole kit and
bilinı) and whole kit and cargo, with the original very likely to have
just been the whole kititıs recorded in this form in Groseıs
Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue in 1785. It was also current in the US
as the whole boodle from the 1830s. It seems that the whole kit and
caboodle eventually won the linguistic battle for survival in the US
because of that repeated ³k² sound, though Dialect Notes in 1908 said
that these other versions were still known from various parts of the
country. Sinclair Lewis used one of them in Main Street in 1920: ³The
whole kit and bilinı of ıem are nothing in Godıs world but socialism in
disguise².
(Lou he always liked that SL!)
Boodle is familiar as the relatively modern US word for money illegally
obtained, particularly linked to bribery and corruption. This is
usually suggested as coming from the Dutch boedel, ³inheritance,
household effects; possessions². But itıs uncertain whether itıs the
same word as the one in the whole kit and boodle. 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). As kit here means oneıs equipment, to put the two
together in the sense of everything that one has, equipment and
personal possessions, seems reasonable.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-who2.htm