[Ads-l] the bee's knees (1920)

Fri Oct 19 20:40:56 UTC 2018

Chronicling America turns up numerous references to "bee's knees" (but not
"*the* bee's knees") as far back as 1902, usually as a supposed gourmet
dish - "bee's knees and petunia sauce" shows up early and more than once.
Here's a late example that shows "bee's knees" were still a matter of
culinary interest 14 years later:

1916 South Bend News-Times (Aug. 2) 4: Strawberry sandwiches, peanut
cookies, toasted marshmallows, and other airy-fairy dishes which suggest
the "bee's knees and gnat's knuckles" of burlesque stage memory.

JL

On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 4:09 PM Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks, Peter! That one had eluded my searches. Here's the Newspaper.com
> clipping:
>
> https://www.newspapers.com/clip/24670931/bees_knees/
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 3:42 PM Peter Reitan <pjreitan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > "Bees knees" superlative US 1919.  In a golfing anecdote about the most
> > amazing wind-affected shot ever:
> >
> > Sioux City Journal, July 17, 1919, page 12.
> >
> > [Begin excerpt] "But that was not the worst one.  Another time I saw a
> man
> > taking his approach shot, and he made a good one, but as Col. Bogey is my
> > judge, the wind caught that ball and carried it all the way back to the
> tee
> > from which he started."
> >
> > As Eddie Styles would say, that one was the bees' knees.
> > [End excerpt]
> >
> > Eddie Styles was a well-known golfer at the time.
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Ben
> > Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM>
> > Sent: Friday, October 19, 2018 12:22 PM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Subject: the bee's knees (1920)
> >
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM>
> > Subject:      the bee's knees (1920)
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > HDAS and OED have "the bee's knees" in the sense of "a superlative
> > person/thing" from 1923. GDoS has it from 1922 (except for one
> questionable
> > outlier -- see below), and Hugo gives some additional cites from that
> year
> > in this English Stack Exchange thread:
> >
> >
> >
> https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/47088/where-does-the-phrase-the-bees-knees-originate-from
> >
> > In that same thread, Phil M. Jones cites an example from 1920:
> >
> > ---
> > The National, Nov.-Dec. 1920, p. 358, col. 3
> > "How Movie Dope is Written," by Stewart Arnold Wright
> > For lack of something better, I said to [Ernest] Hilliard, "Well, what do
> > you think of this 'Annabel Lee' picture?"
> > "It's the bee's knees," he replied. "If it doesn't knock Broadway on its
> > ear, I'll kiss your Adam's apple in Wanamaker's display window at 12
> > o'clock noon."
> > https://books.google.com/books?id=ytVOAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA358
> > ---
> >
> > Here it is earlier in 1920, quoting a delegate to the Democratic National
> > Convention in San Francisco:
> >
> > ---
> > https://www.newspapers.com/clip/24666781/bees_knees/
> > San Francisco Examiner, July 5, 1920, p. 2, col. 6
> > First Delegate: "Well, now ain't that the bee's knees! Why, I'm having a
> > swell time here, Swell. This is a great town."
> > ---
> >
> > Even earlier that year, in the Feb. 8, 1920 issue of the St. Louis
> > Post-Dispatch, there are references to a vaudeville show called "The
> Bee's
> > Knees" (presented by Joe Laurie, Jr.), but there's no indication of
> whether
> > the show used it in the superlative sense or for some other fanciful
> > purpose.
> >
> > https://www.newspapers.com/clip/24668442/the_bees_knees/
> > https://www.newspapers.com/clip/24668460/the_bees_knees/
> >
> > I don't see anything clearly related to the superlative sense before
> that,
> > though "bee's knees" did appear in various contexts as a kind of nonsense
> > phrase, as noted by Hugo on English Stack Exchange as well as by The
> Phrase
> > Finder:
> >
> > https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-bees-knees.html
> >
> > GDoS has a dubious cite dated to 1905 in a letter by the Australian folk
> > singer Duke Tritton:
> >
> > ---
> > 1905 Duke Tritton's Letter n.p.: 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.
> > ---
> >
> > The full text of the rhyming-slang-stuffed letter can be found here:
> >
> > https://www.tsukuba-g.ac.jp/library/kiyou/98/12.yokose.pdf
> >
> > On Twitter, Jonathon Green says that further research has dated the
> letter
> > to "somewhere in the teens":
> >
> > https://twitter.com/MisterSlang/status/1053315085228224513
> >
> > But even that would be an outlier given that there's no US evidence
> before
> > 1920 (and there's no evidence that the superlative meaning of the phrase
> > came from Australia). So either it's a case of independent invention, or
> > Duke Tritton's letter was actually written later, in the '20s.
> >
> > --bgz
> >
> >
>
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>

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