Bee's knees - was [SOC] Re; beverage

[Hank Kohl K8DD]

At 2/5/2003 10:04 AM -0500, Bob Patten wrote:
>hattonte@gdls.com wrote:
>
>>What are (is) "the Bee's knees"?
>>I had no idea bees had knees.    Presumably, about half-a-dozen per bee.
>That's Almost before my time, and I'm going on 63.  I believe that 
>expression is from the 1920's??
>
>--
>73,     Bob Patten, N4BP                Plantation, FL


Here's what I found .....

BEE'S KNEES

 From T Senthilnathan: "The bee's knees informally means the best, the most 
desirable. How did the saying originate?"

It's one of a set of nonsense catchphrases that originated in North America 
in the 1920s, the period of the flappers, nearly all of which compared some 
thing of excellent quality to a part of an animal. You might at that period 
have heard such curious concoctions as cat's miaow, elephant's adenoids, 
bullfrog's beard, gnat's elbows, monkey's eyebrows, cat's whiskers, and 
dozens of others. Only a very few have survived, of which bee's knees is 
perhaps the best known, though cat's pyjamas (an exception to the 
anatomical rule) also survives.