Bee’s knees

If something is the bee’s knees it is excellent or of the highest quality. Although many explanations of the origin have been put forward, they all remain exercises in imagination rather than etymology. Bee’s knees and cat’s whiskers are the only two phrases that seem to have survived from what was once a fashionable trend to use nonsensical or meaningless phrases to denote excellence during the 1920s in America. Unfortunately, they made their way across the Atlantic to Britain. Other now defunct phrases from this trend, attributing fictitious or jocular properties to animals or insects, were gnat’s elbows, snake’s hips, eel’s ankles, oyster’s earrings, canary’s tusks, elephant’s adenoids, etc. This unique American trend generated an almost endless list of such phrases. Mercifully, the trend did not last long, but bee’s knees and cat’s whiskers have survived, inexplicably.