Paraphernalia is the odds and ends needed for an activity. All the paraphernalia of fishing.
It suggests more equipment than the activity really needs, which is the tone of the word. The original sense was the property a wife kept as her own beyond her dowry.
1nounparaphernaliaThe odds and ends needed for an activity.
“The paraphernalia filled the whole boot before anybody got in.”
paraphernalia is equipment.
Medieval Latin paraphernalia named the goods a wife kept beyond her dowry, from Greek para plus pherne, a dowry.
Ancient Greek
παράφερνα
Medieval Latin
paraphernālia — goods which a wife brings over and above her dowry
English, today
paraphernalia
Built from
Medieval Latin paraphernālia (“goods which a wife brings over and above her dowry”), use as noun (short for paraphernālia bona (“paraphernal goods”)) of neuter plural of paraphernālis, from parapherna + -ālis, from Ancient Greek παράφερνα, a compound of παρά + φερνή. In the propertied classes, a dowry was placed under the control of the husband, while the paraphernalia which she brought with her remained the wife’s property.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA