8 May 2024
Most people associate the bee’s knees, meaning something that is excellent or otherwise superlative, with the Roaring ’20s and the Jazz Age. But while the phrase did come into its present-day meaning shortly before and experienced a rise in popularity during that era, it has precursor meanings that predate it by a considerable number of years. And while it is popularly considered to be an Americanism, early uses can be found in Australia, Ireland, and Britain, making the region of origin difficult to pin down. The phrase is often attributed to cartoonist Thomas Aloysius “Tad” Dorgan, but while he may have used the phrase, he did not coin it.
The phrase is first attested to the late eighteenth century in the sense of something very small. Then, at the turn of the twentieth century, it came to refer to some nonsense thing, and a decade or so later the present-day sense of something excellent appeared. There is some evidence that this sense of bee’s knees was popular among American doughboys during the First World War, and that sense ballooned among the general public in the post-war years, as the soldiers returned from service.
The bee’s knees is only the one of the more popular and long-lasting in a series of animal phrases constructed with the definite article the, such as the cat’s pajamas. Others include the antelope’s tonsils, bullfrog’s beard, canary’s tusks, caterpillar’s camisole / kimono / spats, cat’s cuffs / kneeknuckles / lingerie / nightgown / tonsilitis / vest, clam’s cuticle / garters, crocodile’s adenoids, duck’s quack, elephant’s tonsils, frog’s eyebrows, kipper’s knickers, kitten’s vest, lion’s bathrobe, oyster’s eyetooth, pig’s scream / whiskers, sandfly garters, snake’s eyebrows, and sparrow’s chirp. It's easy to see how the idea of such rare or impossible things could give rise to a phrase denoting something that is exceptional or especially noteworthy.
The earliest use of bee’s knees, actually a reference to it being used, that I’m aware of is in an 1896 issue of the British journal Notes and Queries. The writer is citing a letter written to his grandmother, dated 27 June 1797:
A ”Bee’s Knee” (8th S. x. 92, 199).—I find the phrase “As big as a bee’s knee” in a letter from Mrs. Townley Ward to her sister, my grandmother, dated 27 June, 1797: “It cannot be as big as a bee’s knee.”
Notes and Queries is a long-running (since 1849) scholarly journal that publishes informal notes and questions about language, literature, and history to which other readers respond. It is, essentially, the print precursor of an internet message board or social media site. It’s still being published, although the internet has short-circuited its utility as a research tool.
This use of bee’s knee (it is usually in the singular in this sense) as a comparison to something very small would continue through to the twentieth century. I have an American usage from Philadelphia’s Atkinson’s Saturday Evening Post of 12 November 1831:
Waiter; walk a kidney three times before the fire, and bring it me with a shallot as hot as the first broadside; and, d’ye hear, put a bite of butter not bigger than a bee’s knee on the bilge of it; mind that!
And there is this from The Great Metropolis, published in New York City in 1837, but the account is about London, and this is probably an American reprint of an originally British book:
“Ned, my jolly old fellow,” said one cartman to another, as they both sat quaffing a pot of porter in the tap-room—“Ned, von’t [sic] you have a slice of this here loaf?
“I’m not a bit hungry,” said Ned.
“Take a slice; there’s a good fellow.”
“Well, if I do,” said Ned, “let it be only the bigness of a bee’s knee.”
But at the turn of twentieth century the plural bee’s knees began to be used to refer to some fantastic or fanciful object, often a jocular stand-in for some exotic and foreign foodstuff. This new sense would seem to be a generalization of something absurdly small to something just absurd, often some exotic foodstuff. The earliest use of this sense that I’m aware of is from the Daily Globe of Fall River, Massachusetts of 5 September 1901:
A large plate glass window in Holden & Hindle’s store was broken about 11.15 o’clock last night. George Borden, of Westport, vender of watercress, bee’s knees, clam’s ankles, etc., did the trick, but he claims it was purely accidental.
And the next year there is this in the 27 October 1902 issue of the Poughkeepsie Daily Eagle:
In another of the dozen or so artictles [sic] about the Eagle in Saturday morning’s paper, Mr. Hinkley states that he will pave between the tracks IF Mr. Butts is elected. If we thought for a single minute that this would be done, hand if we wouldn’t vote for Allison. Such a proposition is about as safe as the man who went into a restaurant and offered $100 for some fried bee’s knees.
And writer Zane Grey used the phrase in his 1909 short story The Short Stop. Grey was chiefly known for his novels about the American West, but he had played baseball for the University of Pennsylvania and for several years in the minor leagues, and this story is about the sport, although the passage in question has nothing to do with baseball:
“Wall, how's things? Ploughin’ all done? You don’t say. An’ corn all planted? Do tell! An’ the ham-trees growing all right?
“Whet?” questioned the farmer, plainly mystified, leaning forward.
“How’s yer ham-trees?”
“Never heard of sich.”
“Wall, don-gone me! Why over in Indianer our ham-trees is sproutin’ powerful. An’ how about bee’s knees? Got any bee’s knees this spring?”
On the other end of the literary spectrum we find this in the 1 September 1910 issue of the Mirror, the newspaper of the prison in Stillwater, Minnesota:
Oliver Twist of the Steward’s department informed us that he will tender a banquet to The Mirror Sporting Writers’ Association and forwards a copy of the menu which we publish below:
Mock Duck Soup.
Young Onion Tops (decapitated)
Spinach a la Si Haskell
Seedless Orange Seeds Stewed
Broiled Bees’ Knees
Fried Ice Cream
New Potato Peelings a la Olive
Rimless Doughnuts
Distilled Water
And there is this that appeared in Nevada’s Tonopah Daily Bonanza of 14 August 1912. The article is an opinion piece supporting Clarance Darrow’s defense of the McNamara brothers, labor unionists who detonated a bomb at the Los Angeles Times newspaper in 1910, killing twenty-one people. Darrow managed to get them a plea deal that spared them from the death penalty:
I do not favor violence. I have fought labor unions all my life. I drew up the famous anti-picketing ordinance, yet I had walked the streets all day trying to sell my labor to feed my hungry and crying babies, and couldn’t get work, while others were living on bees’ knees, humming bird’s tongues and giving monkey dinners. I would commit violence. I would tear the front off the first national bank with my finger nails.
A few years earlier, starting in 1905, we get a series of Australian uses of the phrase. The first, and most interesting, is in a 3 March 1905 letter by folk-singer Harold Percival “Duke” Tritton. The letter, which is filled with slang, was found among his papers following his death in 1965 and mined by lexicographers for the verbal treasures it contains:
And I am popular with the family, and the neighbours. So everything is Jakalorum. I’m teaching Mary and all the tin lids in the district to dark an’ dim, and they reckon I’m the bees knees, ants pants and nits tits all rolled into one.
Tritton seems to be using bee’s knees in the superlative sense, which would make it, by several years, the earliest such use. But it also refers to the earlier sense of size with its association with ants pants and nits tits. That would make it something of a transitional use between the two senses, but its appearance in Australia is puzzling. Did the later sense develop there first? Or was the superlative sense in use on several continents before it started appearing in print?
A few months later we get another Australian sense, but this one seems to be a nonce use, a confusion with another term. The music column of Adelaide’s Evening Journal of 19 August 1905 has this:
