caboodle
Americannoun
idioms
noun
Etymology
Origin of caboodle
Explanation
A caboodle is a complete group or collection of something. Your eccentric aunt might send you her doll collection, enclosing a note that says, "I gave you the whole caboodle!" Caboodle is an informal way to talk about an entire bunch of some item or category, frequently within the phrase "the whole kit and caboodle," which has the same meaning. You might say you love everything about movies — the whole caboodle — or buy all the ice cream from your neighborhood shop, the entire caboodle. The root of caboodle is probably the older phrase "kit and boodle," and the Dutch boedel, "property."
Vocabulary lists containing caboodle
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Paramount is offering $30 for the whole caboodle.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 17, 2026
People are fleeing Tesla’s stock at rates that far exceed other stocks or the index funds that track that whole kit and caboodle.
From Slate • Apr. 22, 2025
That is until they worm their way into the lives of the wealthy Park family, getting jobs as their caboodle of servicepeople.
From Salon • Mar. 25, 2025
Mac would perform large excerpts at concerts, then on Oct. 8-9, 2016, did the whole caboodle as an ultramarathon of 246 songs.
From New York Times • Jun. 27, 2023
They ought to take the whole kit and caboodle of these cement parking lots and heave them into the sea, I thought.
From "The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother" by James McBride
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.
