from collections import UserDict class MyDict(UserDict, bar='baz'): """ This is a simple extension of the UserDict class showing kwargs failing In python3 class definitions support **kwargs see: pep-3115 https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3115/ However any class derived from ABCMeta will throw an exception """ pass # Throws type error on __new__() because UserDict inherits from ABCMeta and # it does not support **kwargs dictionary = MyDict()