Chrysti The Wordsmith: The Cat's Pajamas

Greetings This is Christie the wordsmith. The bee's knees. The cat's meow. The cat's pajamas. These slang synonyms for remarkable or GREAT have something of a quaint old fashioned feel about them today. But when they were coined in the early 20th century they were thoroughly smart and up to the minute word watcher Tom dolls Dale in his reference book flappers to rappers American youth slang cites evidence that these expressions were only a part of a vast repertoire of playful nonsense zoological metaphors invented and proliferated by American flappers in the 1920s brashly stepping into a new century flappers defied convention by cutting their hair and their hemlines drinking and smoking in public and twisting the King's English into bold new structures. This was the environment in which those animal phrases were hatched. The cat's pajamas for example. First seen in print in one thousand twenty was initially a bit scandalous pajamas newly imported from India in the early

20th century were considered shocking nightwear for women but other expressions such as the bee's knees and the cat's meow were simply exuberant playful animal expressions that fit the flappers favorite linguistic equation. Any animals. Anything. Some forgotten but equally colorful flapper constructs are the canaries tusks the elephants adenoids the gnats elbows and the clams garters. I'm Christie the wordsmith. Good day for the horse. CHRISTIE The wordsmith is sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry Web dot com.