You’re the Bee’s Knees!
A friend informed me this morning that I am “the bee’s knees.” I already thought I was pretty terrific, and her pronouncement confirms the fact. I am (at least as friends go) excellent. But then I started wondering about the phrase. Do bees even have knees? If so, are those knees excellent? An exhaustive five-minute search of the Internet answered my question, sort of.
There is some speculation that the phrase refers to the pollen bees collect on their legs as they buzz from flower to flower. The evidence doesn’t support this theory though. I’m not sure how you would get “excellent” out of a little blob of pollen on an insect’s leg—unless you’re either a queen bee or a botanist.
In fact, the phrase may have nothing to do with actual bees at all. The first known usage of “the bee’s knees” was in 1920s America. The phrase was described in one newspaper as “flapper talk,” but it doesn’t seem to appear in any “flapper dictionaries” of the time. Plenty of other strange phrases do appear though. It looks as though coining nonsense phrases to mean “excellence” was fashionable at the time. Think of “the cat’s pajamas” or “the kipper’s knickers.” Okay, maybe you’ve never heard that last one, but you get the idea. It’s just a short hop from the cat’s pajamas to the bee’s knees, right?
Another explanation suggests “the bee’s knees” has something to do with 1920s world champion Charleston dancer Bee Jackson, who has been credited with introducing the Charleston to Broadway. Presumably Ms. Jackson’s knees were excellent. You might even say they were the kipper’s knickers.
For more information:
The Phrase Finder
-
Meta
