We've all heard of the phrase ';The Bees Knees';, but do bees actually have knees?

The exact origin of ';bee's knees'; remains a topic of debate, but there is wide-spread agreement that the phrase first appeared in North America during the 1920s. Some interesting theories are listed below. I personally like #5 and #7 the most and see them as the most plausible.





1) Bees carry pollen back to the hive in sacs on their legs. The illusion is to the concentrated goodness to be found around the bee's knee.





2) The expression was coined in the 1920s by an American cartoonist named Tad Dorgan, who also graced the language with such corny superlatives as ';the cat's pajamas'; and less durable ones such as the ';the flea's eyebrows'; and - a real clunker - ';the canary's tusks.'; Dorgan also came up with: ';Yes, we have no bananas.'; I've long been puzzled why, to this day, the bee's knees expression has maintained a certain currency in Britain, something it has not had for decades in the United States. The thought occurs that perhaps, more than half a century on, it's a still lingering cultural artifact from the American occupation of the south of England in the lead-up to D-Day.





3) 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.





4) I think the idea is that on a bee, knees are strictly a luxury. The phrase originated in 1920s U.S. slang, which had a whole slue of such phrases: ';the eel's ankle';, ';the flea's eyebrows';, ';the clam's garter';, ';the snake's hips';, ';the elephant's instep';, ';the kipper's knickers';, ';the cat's pyjamas';, ';the canary's tusks';, ';the sardine's whiskers';. The fact that ';the bee's knees'; rhymes may have assisted its survival.





5) The bee's knees is actually a development from something that was originally stated as ';The be all and the end all of everything.'; this being rather long, was shortened to ';the B's and E's'; which eventually became ';the bee's knees.';





6) My Dictionary of American Slang says ';bee's knees'; was a fad started c1924. Like some Chinese menus, pick one from column A and one from column B.





7) Bee's knees may be a humorous pronunciation of business. I have seen this offered as a genuine derivation and it seems as plausible as the current favourite for OK.We've all heard of the phrase ';The Bees Knees';, but do bees actually have knees?
I have a lot of friends who are bees and one of them just had knee ligament trouble following a football injury, so obviously the answer is cheddar.We've all heard of the phrase ';The Bees Knees';, but do bees actually have knees?
They do have leg joints, but not kneecaps.They have pockets in their 'knees' for putting pollen in!
Y E S
well they do bend.
Of course they do. How do you think they bend their legs?
im not 100% but i wouldnt think so lol
Well they have legs, so I suppose they must have knees in order to bend them.
yes they also have ankles. they use pits in their knees for holding the pollen they collect.