[Ads-l] The cat's pajamas (1920) [Was: the bee's knees (1920)]

Thu Feb 29 22:17:22 UTC 2024

Several years ago, Ben shared with us this early use of "the bee's knees."

> 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."

That piece, by Damon Runyan (!), may also contain the earliest
sighting yet (until someone corrects me) of "the cat's pajamas."

I see that Jonathan Green shares a July 1921 usage of "the cat's
pajamas" as his earliest example of the expression. (Last I checked,
the OED had 1923.)

https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/65sizni

There, Jonathan notes that it was "coined, like many other similar
terms, by the US sportwriter T.A. ‘Tad’ Dorgan (1877–1929)." (Dorgan
was also a cartoonist.) That Dorgan often gets credit for this coinage
(and others) likely stems from W.L. Werner's "Tad Dorgan Is Dead,"
American Speech, Volume 4, Number 6 (August 1929), p. 430. Werner
lists "cat's pajamas" as "among the terms which the daily press
credits Mr. Dorgan with inventing," though -- as others have pointed
out -- Dorgan reused a lot of slang that he had heard from others.

Anyway, Runyan's sketch
(https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-san-francisco-examiner-cats-pajama/142309144/)
uses "[ain't that] the cat's pajamas" four times, in addition to one
"the bee's knees." He also has his character saying, "the turkey's
tracks," "the horse's necktie," and "the beetle's business," but those
don't seem to have taken off. (This syndicated piece appeared in
several newspapers across the country.)

Just below I've tacked on a few other appearances of "the cat's
pajamas" that predate that July 1921 usage. (BTW, at newspapers.com
there seems to be a 1918 sighting of "the cat's pajamas," but it's
misdated.)

Finally, "the kitten's pajamas" was a thing, too, but I haven't found
instances of it appearing before 1921.

-- Bonnie

----------------------------

Ain't that the cat's pajamas!

[A comment appended to a reprinting of "a New York clipping" about an
upcoming bout between boxers Sammy Good and Barney Adair, in The San
Francisco Call, 25 September 1920, p. 17, bottom of column 6.
https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SFC19200925.2.280&srpos=1&e=-------en--20--1-byDA-txt-txIN-%22cat%27s+pajamas%22-------
]

----------------------------

"Yes, that's the cat's pajamas, Sam!" nodded Jim Stubb ...

[In "Up State Statistics Disclose Holiday Trade," Tobacco,16 December
1920, p. 37. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Tobacco/ZgduqXKNrLsC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22cat's%20pajamas%22&pg=RA5-PA3&printsec=frontcover]

----------------------------

"King" writes from Smith Thompson at Sebastopol, Russia, "While we
don't exactly claim to be the old cat's pajamas in everything still we
will not let the Alden pull a lot of bull about her class as a
baseball team. The Alden is not the best baseball ship in these parts.
The Chattanooga is and the Smith Thompson is a close second. We are
the best of the little packets known as the Black Sea Express. Pie and
cake five times a week. That's us."

[In "U.S.S. Smith Thompson," Our Navy; the Standard Publication of the
United States Navy, January 1921, p. 25,
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Our_Navy_the_Standard_Publication_of_the/FIM9AQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22cat's%20pajamas%22&pg=RA8-PA25&printsec=frontcover]

----------------------------

BTW, "the cat's pajamas" also appeared in "Henry," Russell Cole's
comic strip, in May 1921,
https://www.newspapers.com/article/des-moines-tribune-cats-pajamas-comi/142315748/

On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 3:22 PM Ben Zimmer <bgzimmer at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org