Other forms: kits
Kit is everything a soldier carries and wears, and by extension any set of equipment for an activity. Full kit, kit inspection, get your kit together.
In British English kit is the standard word for sports clothing — football kit, PE kit — and for a set of parts sold to be assembled: a model kit, a first aid kit. The verb kit out means to equip somebody fully. Note kit and caboodle, meaning the whole lot, and that in British informal speech get your kit off means to undress, which is a trap worth knowing about before using the word loosely.
1nounkitThe equipment and clothing needed for an activity.
“He turned up without any of his kit.”
2nounsetA set of parts sold to be assembled.
“The shed came as a kit and took a weekend.”
3nounsportsSports clothing.
“The away kit is dark green this season.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
kit is a set of equipment.
Middle Dutch kitte was a wooden tub made of hooped staves. The word moved from the container to what was carried in it, and then to the equipment itself — the same journey a kitbag makes on a shoulder.
Middle Dutch
kitte
Middle English
kyt
English, today
kit
From Middle English kyt, from Middle Dutch kitte. From Middle English kyt,kytt,kytte, from Middle Dutch kitte (“a wooden vessel made of hooped staves”). Related to Dutch kit (“tankard”) (see below). The further etymology is unknown. Perhaps from Proto-Germanic kitjō-,kut-, which would be related to the root of Dutch kot* (“ramshackle house”), itself of non-Indo-European origin. The transfer of meaning to the contents of a soldier's knapsack dates to the late 18th century, extended use of any collection of necessaries used for travelling dates to the first half of the 19th century.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA