kaboodle

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:52 PM -0700 5/18/09, Dave Wilton wrote:
>The usual spelling is "caboodle." It's a variant of "boodle," which
>is from the Dutch "boedel," meaning estate, possessions, or
>property. It was more common in the 19th century, when you found
>phrases like "the whole boodle" or "the whole caboodle."

Interesting.  The OED does have it as "the whole caboodle" (from
Ohio, in 1848, with an 1873 cite from Bret Harte), but only
vouchsafes the etymology as "supposed to be a corruption of the
phrase _kit and boodle_, but under _boodle_ the sense that "suggests
Du. _boedel_ 'estate, possession, inheritance, stock" is glossed as
'counterfeit money' and acknowledged to be "not so easy to connect
with sense 1", which is the relevant one for _kit and (ca)boodle_
('crowd, pack, lot').  HDAS does give essentially the story Dave
cites, i.e. Du. _boedel_ > _boodle_ > _caboodle_.  (There's a nice
"whole kerboodle" under the HDAS entry for the last, also from Bret
Harte.)

LH

>
>-----Original Message-----1
>From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On
>Behalf Of Mark Mandel
>Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 5:38 PM
>To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>Subject: kaboodle
>
>We have it only in the idiom "(the whole) kit and kaboodle", but does
>anyone know its origin?
>
>--
>Mark Mandel
>
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>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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