Just where did the saying ‘bees knees’ come from? And why do we say it? Richard Jones investigates <\/p>
Like all insects<\/a>, bees<\/a> do have knees. Speaking anthropomorphically, the joint between the femur (thigh) and tibia (shin) of an insect’s leg is its knee. They don’t, however, have kneecaps.<\/p> However the origin of the phrase ‘bees knees’ is rather unclear. Used in the 18th century to refer to something very small, its present meaning of something marvellous might be a reference to 1920s dancer Bee Jackson’s active knees when she popularised the Charleston, or to the goodness of the pollen<\/a> load carried on a bee’s back legs.<\/p> It may also just be fun nonsense, like the expression ‘the cat’s pyjamas. To me, though, it seems to be a corruption of ‘the business’.<\/p> Just where did the saying ‘bees knees’ come from? And why do we say it? Richard Jones investigates <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":38169,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"< 1"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/05\/why-do-we-say-bees-knees-and-for-that-matter-do-bees-even-have-knees.jpg",2336,1752,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/05\/why-do-we-say-bees-knees-and-for-that-matter-do-bees-even-have-knees-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/05\/why-do-we-say-bees-knees-and-for-that-matter-do-bees-even-have-knees-300x225.jpg",300,225,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/05\/why-do-we-say-bees-knees-and-for-that-matter-do-bees-even-have-knees-768x576.jpg",768,576,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/05\/why-do-we-say-bees-knees-and-for-that-matter-do-bees-even-have-knees-1024x768.jpg",800,600,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/05\/why-do-we-say-bees-knees-and-for-that-matter-do-bees-even-have-knees-1536x1152.jpg",1536,1152,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2024\/05\/why-do-we-say-bees-knees-and-for-that-matter-do-bees-even-have-knees-2048x1536.jpg",2048,1536,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Just where did the saying 'bees knees' come from? And why do we say it? Richard Jones investigates","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/38168"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcwildlife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Why do we say ‘bees knees’?<\/h2>
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