Then I Got a Family Bee Knees Lacquer

The bee's knees

What's the meaning of the phrase 'The bee's knees'?

If something is said to be the bee'southward knees it is splendid - the highest quality.

The phrase, like 'the true cat'south pajamas', has given its name to a cocktail, fabricated from gin and honey with lemon and orangish juice.

What'southward the origin of the phrase 'The bee's knees'? - the short version

The phrase 'the bee's knees' was originally an 18th century fanciful phrase which referred to something that didn't exist. It was used equally the kind of spoof item apprentices would exist sent to the stores to fetch - like tartan pigment or a left-handed hammer. This meaning is no longer used.

In the Roaring Twenties in America, bright young things invented nonsense linguistic communication to refer to things that were 'the tops' - like 'the true cat'due south pajamas', 'the snake's hips' and so on. They utilized the existing 'bee's knees' phrase to add to that list.

The expression has since spread and is now used worldwide to mean 'excellent/the very best'

What'south the origin of the phrase 'The bee'south knees'? - the total story

Information technology's hard to know if we need an etymologist or an entomologist for this 1.

I suppose the first question ask of either would exist "Practice bees have knees?". Well, yes they exercise. Not exactly like your knees though. Bees accept six leg sections and each is connected by a joint. These joints aren't unremarkably named but what better proper noun than genu? The joint between the femur and tibia is the most 'articulatio genus-like'.

Bees carry pollen back to the hive in sacs on their legs. It is tempting to explain 'the bee's knees' every bit alluding to the concentrated goodness to be found around a bee's knee, but there's no bear witness to support this caption. It is besides sometimes said to be a corruption of 'concern', only there's no evidence to back up that either.

Nor is in that location any connectedness with another earlier phrase, 'a bee's knee'. In the 18th century this was used as a synonym for smallness, but has since disappeared from the linguistic communication:

Mrs. Townley Ward - Letters, June 1797 in Northward. & Q. "It cannot be as big as a bee's knee."

'Bee'due south knees' began to exist used in early 20th century America. Initially, it was but a nonsense expression that denoted something that didn't accept whatever meaningful being - the kind of matter that a naive apprentice would be sent to the stores to ask for, like a 'sky-hook' or 'striped paint'. At that place are comic American newspaper stories from the period where guests at a meal spent the evening sewing buttons on water ice-cream and eating bee'southward knees.

That 'not-existent' meaning is apparent in a spoof report in the New Zealand newspaper The West Coast Times in Baronial 1906, which listed the cargo carried by the SS Zealandia as 'a quantity of post holes, 3 numberless of treacle and 7 cases of bees' knees'.

The teasing wasn't restricted to the southern hemisphere. The US author Zane Greyness's 1909 story, The Shortstop, has a metropolis slicker teasing a yokel by questioning him about brand-believe farm products:

"How's yer ham copse? Wal, dog-gone me! Why, over in Indianer our ham trees is sproutin' powerful. An' how about the bee's knees? Got whatsoever bee'southward knees this Spring?"

This odd cartoon from the May 5th 1914 edition of the Fort Wayne Sentinel uses the term in exactly the same way:

[Text: Now dot I haf adopted Mr Skygack I suppose I haf to feed him. Vot does he consume? He likes bees' knees. Bees' knees? Yes, sure, he is very fond of them. Vell, I approximate I got to catch some bees. Diss looks like a bee-hive.]

At that place'south no profound reason to chronicle bees and knees other than the jaunty-sounding rhyme of 'bees' and 'knees'. In the 1920s it was fashionable to use nonsense terms to denote excellence - 'the snake's hips', 'the kipper's knickers', 'the cat's pyjamas/whiskers', 'the monkey's eyebrows' and and then on. Of these, the bee's knees and the cat's whiskers are the only ones to have stood the exam of time.

The nonsense expression 'the bee's knees' was taken up by the socialites of Roaring 20s America and added to the list of 'excellent' phrases.

The showtime use of the expression in print with the "excellent" meaning that I tin can observe is from the United states newspaper The Buffalo Times, Feb 1922. It was in a spoof account of the spousal relationship of Princess Mary in London:

"I seen a princess once and it only cost a dime. Her name was Princess Fatima and I'll say she was the bee's knees when it come up to dancing'."

Several U.S. newspapers did feature lists of phrases under 'Flapper Dictionary' headings. Although 'bee'due south knees' isn't featured, they practice testify the time as being a period of quirky linguistic coinage; for instance, from one such Flapper Dictionary:

Kluck - impaired person.
Impaired kluck - worse than a kluck.
Pollywoppus - meaningless stuff.
Fly-paper - a guy who sticks around.

One tenuous connexion between the bee's knees and an actual bee relates to Bee Jackson. Ms. Jackson was a dancer in 1920s New York and popularised the Charleston, existence credited past some as introducing the dance to Broadway in 1924. She went on to become the Earth Champion Charleston dancer and was quite historic at the time.

It'southward not beyond the bounds of possibility that the expression became popular in reference to her and her very agile knees, only 1924 mail service dates the origin of the phrase.

See other phrases that were coined in the USA.

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Source: https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-bees-knees.html

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