Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2025-05-10
My grandparents were born near the beginning of the 20th century and they were country folk, and I heard them use these phrases often…but in their correct forms, “kit and caboodle” and “spit and image.”
Today I more often see these phrases in writing than hear them, and curiously I see them written as “kitten caboodle” and “spitten/spittin/spitting image.”
Do these quality as eggcorns?
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Wow. I wasn’t aware that the original was “spit and image,” but just googled it and it is.
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As a child I heard it as “spittin’ image,” but it didn’t make sense to me. Eventually I asked my grandfather what it meant, which caused a great deal of amusement, i.e., he was unable to correct my mis-hearing until he could stop laughing. The correct phrase didn’t make much sense to my child’s mind either, but making my grandfather laugh until he had to sit down…that stuck with me!
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Hi SweetViolet; too bad you didn’t locate our eggcorn website sooner because your post is right on the mark. Here is some more discussion on the eggcorns you propose:
‘the whole kitten kaboodle’ for ‘the whole kit and caboodle’ by Elgee Contribute! 1 2005-11-15 13:02:21 by klakritz
Here’s the address for the Database article on “spitting imageâ€
http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/33 … ing-image/
The comments to that article are also worth looking at; the first, third and fourth comments there address the “splitting image†variant.
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Happy hunting!
Last edited by jorkel (2007-06-04 12:06:29)
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Looking at ‘kitten caboodle’ prompted me to search for ‘kitchen caboodle.’ It’s common but almost always used deliberately as the name of a store that sells cookware.
On the other hand, ‘kitsch and caboodle’ is rare, but looks like a genuine eggcorn.
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