The cat’s pajamas, denoting something excellent, arose in the 1920’s along with many similarly improbable phrases involving animals and their anatomy or possessions, including the gnat’s elbow, the eel’s ankles, and the...
What’s so cool about bees’ knees, anyway? The bee’s knees, a phrase meaning “cool” or “great,” dates back to the flapper era of the 1920s. It relates to an old definition of the word “cute,”...
flapper n.— «In the early 1930s he sold his shares and paid £24,000 for an unlicensed dog track—a “flapper,” as they are called—upon whose land Walthamstow was built.» —“The last days of Walthamstow Stadium” by...