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whole kit and caboodle, the



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Idioms and Phrases

Everything, every part, as in He packed up all his gear, the whole kit and caboodle, and walked out . This expression is a redundancy, for kit has meant “a collection or group” since the mid-1700s (though this meaning survives only in the full idiom today), and caboodle has been used with the same meaning since the 1840s. In fact caboodle is thought to be a corruption of the phrase kit and boodle , another redundant phrase, since boodle also meant “a collection.”

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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whole ball of wax, thewhole nine yards, the