subs. (old).—1. A dancing master.—New Canting Dictionary (1725); GROSE (1785); Lexicon Balatronicum (1811). [From KIT = a small violin.]
2. (popular).—A person’s baggage or impediments; an outfit; a collection of anything. THE WHOLE KIT = the lot; the WHOLE GRIDIRON or the whole BOILING. In American, the KIT AND BOODLE.
1785. GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, s.v. KIT. … likewise the whole of a soldier’s necessaries, the content of his knapsack, and is used also to express the whole of different commodities; here take the WHOLE KIT, i.e., take all.
1811. GROSE and CLARKE, Lexicon Balatronicum, s.v.
1815. SCOTT, Guy Mannering, xxxiv. ‘Hush!—hush!—I tell you it shall be a joint business.’ ‘Why, will ye give me half the KITT?’ ‘What, half the estate?—d’ye mean we should set up house together at Ellangowan.’
1820. SHELLEY, Œdipus Tyrannus, I.
| Now, Solomon, I’d sell you in a lump | |
| The WHOLE KIT of them. |
1833. MARRYAT, Peter Simple, I. xiv. I hardly need say that my lord’s KIT was valuable; and what was better, they exactly fitted me.
1843. DICKENS, Martin Chuzzlewit, xxv. ‘Ah! I see ’em,’ said Mrs. Gamp; ‘all the WHOLE KIT of ’em numbered like hackney-coaches—ain’t they?’
1846. Punch, ii. p. 44. ‘I’ve got a wife—more fool I—and a KIT o’ children wuss luck!’
1848. THACKERAY, The Book of Snobs, x. He has since devoted his time to billiards, steeple-chasing, and the turf. His head quarters are Rummer’s, in Conduit Street, where he keeps his KIT, but he is ever on the move in the exercise of his vocation as a gentleman jockey and gentleman leg.
1860. DICKENS, Great Expectations, xl. ‘Blast you every one, from the judge in his wig, to the colonist a stirring up the dust. I’ll show you a better gentleman than the WHOLE KIT on you put together!’
3. (venery).—The penis and testes.
