bag and baggage

• bag-and-baggage (attributive use)

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bag and baggage (uncountable)

1. (idiomatic) All one's possessions.
   • 1989, John P. Murphy (annotator and editor), Jesuit Latin Poets of the 17th and 18th Centuries, page 85,

     They did not wait the two months granted, but made a quick decision and picked up bag and baggage, and after leaving four Fathers to care for the Catholics, left on carts and on foot for Antwerp.

   • 1998, David A. Martin, Chapter 1: Obstacles to the Effective Enforcement of Immigration Laws in the United States, Kay Hailbronner, David A. Martin, Hiroshi Motomura (editors), Immigration Controls: The Search for Workable Policies in Germany and the United States, page 25,

     For many years, INS regulations required that deportable aliens be issued a "bag-and-baggage" letter notifying them of their obligation to appear for deportation at a time no sooner than seventy-two hours after service of the notice. […] Sensibly, the INS amended their regulations in 1986 to eliminate the bag-and-baggage letter, instead assuring that the INS would hold the apprehended person for a minimum of seventy-two hours before removal, […] .

   • 2002, Joseph H. Maddox, Save the Day, page 79,

     With bag and baggage, they, along with about six hundred other servicemen of various US Forces, were herded into olive drab military buses and transported to San Francisco, where their ship was waiting, the USNS General Walker.

bag and baggage (not comparable)

1. (idiomatic) With all one's possessions.
   • 1857, Robert Fortune, A Residence Among the Chinese, 2012 Digital Print, page 94,

     I could go from valley to valley and from hill to hill; I could “bring up” when it was necessary; and when my labours were finished in one place, I could go on, bag and baggage, to another.

   • 1906, Jack London, White Fang, Part 3, Chapter 4,

     The summer camp was being dismantled, and the tribe, bag and baggage, was preparing to go off to the fall hunting.

   • 2011, Stanford D. Carman, Wake And Reunion, page 125,

     In early February the North China Marines arrived, bag and baggage, decked out with full uniforms, overcoats and fur-lined hats.