The Bee's Knees

Do you ever wonder, gentle reader, where in the blue blazes certain phrases come from? What in tarnation do we mean by these slangy turns of expression? Are they slangy? By George, I just don't know.

What I do know, as an official language appreciator -- and, therefore, professional non-doer -- it that using these types of phrases is the bee's knees.

The bee's knees!

Apparently, this harmless little nonsense phrase was thrown around a little during the late 18th century to denote "something of a small nature" or just plain old "smallness." The initial thinking behind this phrase derived from a literal bee and its literal knee and the pollen caught there. The tiny bits of pollen. Small amounts. Smallness. The bee's knees.

That little yelling match I had with the sandwich artist at Subway about the correct way to cut my sandwich bread was the bee's knees. It won't lead to any trouble. I'm a regular there. They know me. And if they didn't know me before, they certainly do now. Besides, I can watch to make sure nobody spits in my sandwich. Clear Plexiglas.

(Were there sandwich artists in the 18th century? A bee's knees issue.)

Fast forward to the Roaring '20s and we observe the flappers instituting their sense of cool upon this almost-forgotten kenning. Sans hyphen, of course. (No offense to Beowulf or his bard.) The bee's knees was thrown in with other nonsense phrases to simply mean cool. As in groovy or sweet or rad or boss.

As in cool. No antonym for warm, no verb for to decrease temperature. Just cool.

That monster truck Harley with the shark fins and the fireworks and the bacon. That thing is the bee's knees.

That sandwich artist reference above sounds illicitly bad, redundantly so, like a Daisy Buchanan screw-up, which, in its offending awfulness, is the bee's knees. The awfulness, not the deed.

The what?

The bee's knees.