"Toolkit" (was Re: Heard on "Law & Order: CI")

[Jonathan Lighter]

One of my senseless peeves is the endemic (that means "as a term-of-art') use of "toolkit" by anthropologists to designate "the range of implements and tools available to a (usually extinct) form of the genus _Homo_."  Roughly.

  Reading or, worse, hearing it turns me into a berserk primitive. Why ? Because I'm forced to picture apemen as plumbers and suburban crafts hobbyists.

  That's reason enough for it to be absent from the latest OED.

  Latterly, I've heard or read it applied (with what unconscious perfection! ) to whatever writing techniques are possessed by a student of freshman composition.

  Pardon me if I don't Google this one.

  JL

    Flanigan <flanigan at OHIO.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Beverly Flanigan
Subject: Re: Heard on "Law & Order: CI"
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And then there was the WWI song, "Pack up your troubles in your old kit
bag"--British authorship? But why "kit and biling"--did "kit" come from
"kitchen," with the same connotation as "the whole kitchen sink"? Or, in
this case, the kitchen stove? Just guessing!

At 12:04 PM 10/26/2006, you wrote:
>The OED's instances of "the whole kit" (s.v. kit n1.3; from 1785-1861) are
>mostly British (there's also "all the kit" from 1788). However,
>Bartlett's appendix to the 1848 Dictionary of Americanisms said it's "an
>expression common in various parts of the country" (p. 403).
>
>Besides "the whole kit" per se, various dictionaries (OED, DA, DAE) give
>"whole kit and biling [boiling]" (1859-1941); "whole kit and boodle"
>(a1861-1946); "whole kit and caboodle" (1888-1969); "whole kit and tuck"
>(1871); "whole kit and cargo" (a1852); "whole boodle" (1833-1858); "whole
>caboodle" (a1848-1923).
>
>--Charlie
>_________________________________________
>
>---- Original message ----
> >Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 17:20:54 -0700
> >From: Jonathan Lighter
> >Subject: Re: Heard on "Law & Order: CI"
> >To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >
> >"The whole kit" must be the latest. I heard it the other day on a
> different show.
> >
> > I guess there ain't no time to say "caboodle."
> >
> > JL
> >
> >Wilson Gray wrote:
> >
> >"He liked to dress in women's clothes - panties, bra - the whole _kit_."
> >
> >The whole _kit_?!
> >
> >Perhaps the speaker was a Brit doing a dashed good job of faking an
> >Amurk'n accent. But don't actors have to follow a script?
> >
> >-Wilson
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Get on board. You're invited to try the new Yahoo! Mail.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org