1188. This week, we look at how “the bee's knees” went from meaning something tiny to being the cheeriest slang of the 1920s — and why it outlasted the cat's pajamas and the clam's overshoes. Then, we look at why recipes boss you around with phrases like “fold in cheese” and how cookbook language evolved from chatty medieval notes into clipped, no-nonsense commands.
1188. This week, we look at how “the bee's knees” went from meaning something tiny to being the cheeriest slang of the 1920s — and why it outlasted the cat's pajamas and the clam's overshoes. Then, we look at why recipes boss you around with phrases like “fold in cheese” and how cookbook language evolved from chatty medieval notes into clipped, no-nonsense commands.
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Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty. Last week, we talked about bee-related idioms, but I saved “the bee’s knees” for this week because it’s big enough to stand on its own, and after we're done with that, we'll talk about the specific language of recipes. And for those of you who had questions about the "troops" episode last week, I think I'll get to those next week or maybe the week after.
by Mignon Fogarty
Imagine arriving late for dinner in 1902 and your friend saying not to worry — he's already ordered you bee’s knees and canary birds’ tongues.
That wasn’t a real meal, but it was part of the strange early life of the phrase “the bee’s knees.”
Today, it means something fantastic: “You’re the bee’s knees, darling!” But before it became flapper slang, it was a joke about something tiny, then a joke about rare and ridiculous delicacies, and somehow — for more than 100 years — people kept putting bee’s knees on toast.
So today we’re looking at how an insect's body part — and bees really do have knees, or at least something like them, a joint where their little legs bend — how that part became one of the cheeriest slang phrases of the 1920s.
So at first, people talked about just one little knee! If you wanted to say something was tiny in the 1600s and 1700s, you could say it was not even as big as a bee's knee.
Then, in the 1800s, the knees doubled and people began to use "the bee's knees" to joke about desirable made-up food that was hard to get or frivolous. The Oxford English Dictionary has a citation from 1902 that says, "When one camps for long so far from civilization, milk and eggs are as unattainable as the proverbial bees' knees and canary birds' tongues," and strangely they have four citations spanning more than 100 years about bees' knees on TOAST. I particularly like one from 1951 that says, "the cooks aides all make ludicrous suggestions such as 'bees' knees on toast', 'bobcat pajamas saute'.., and 'butterfly pie'."
"The Saturday Evening Post" used the phrase in a 1917 article explaining why certain “fine families” didn’t make it to a theater show, writing, "It is uncomfortable and undignified to stand in line after dining on bees’ knees and other rare dishes — especially if you are all dolled up.” Indeed!
And a quick aside on spelling. When it picked up the S, the spelling also started going all over the place. You see it as just plural ("bees knees" with just an S on "bees"), plural possessive ("bees' knees" with an apostrophe after the S on "bees"), and singular possessive ("bee's knees" — "bee" apostrophe Ss). Merriam-Webster lists it as the possessive singular, so the experts say we are talking about the knees of just one bee. (Is it Barry B. Benson from the "Bee Movie"? Probably not, but it could be, if you use your imagination.)
So then next, in 1919, we get to the "something fantastic" meaning, which is the one you probably know and think of coming out of the mouth of a jaunty flapper: "That party was the bee's knees!"
And they had lots of similar sayings. In the 1920s, your favorite guy or doll could be the cat's whiskers; the dog's bollocks; the snake's hip; the mosquito's eyebrow, the flea's eyebrows, the elephant's eyebrow, or the monkey's eyebrows — lots of eyebrows — the gnat's elbow; the canary’s tusks; the clam's overshoes; the eel's raincoat; and back to cats — the cat's meow; and the cat's pajamas.
It was really the snowclone of its time! We're already scheduled to talk about snowclones more in a future episode, but briefly, these are phrases like "Orange is the new black," "Pink is the navy blue of India," and "quiet is the new loud," where there's a recognizable pattern and you can just swap in words — in our case something fun is the [some animal's] [body part or occasionally item of clothing].
And like all slang, these phases had their detractors. An unbylined article in the 1922 "Spokesman-Review" titled “Slang of Today Talk Tomorrow: ‘Bee’s Knees’ and ‘Cat’s Pajamas’ Already Giving Way to Latest ‘Flapperese’” complained about the "foolish words" and said they were on their way out but then lamented that "The jazz hounds of this generation love to use long and ugly adjectives like revolting, nauseating, and disgusting. Vile is a favorite word also, and lurid has its admirers."
The writer wasn't free of the bees knees yet, though, because in late 1922, an influential music publishing firm called Leo Feist released a song called “Bees Knees,” which seems likely to have helped the phrase stick in people’s minds. I found a snippet of the sheet music, and Teresa Reinalda, a friend, actress, and visual artist sang it for me so we can hear what it may have sounded like. [music] https://secondhandsongs.com/work/262041/all
And like other slang, "the bee's knees" made its way from teenagers to adults trying to be hip and cool. A couple of years later, in 1925, the phrase showed up in the Automobile Trade Journal in an ad for springs! It says, "Just ask the dealer who sells 'em. He'll tell you this No. 23008 10-plate spring for Ford passenger cars is the 'bee's knees.'"
After something that uncool, it's kind of a miracle we ever heard it again! But we did.
So if you ever dress up like a flapper for a costume party and your date says you are the bee’s knees, you can properly respond that he is the flea’s eyebrows.
by Karen Lunde
Think about the last time you read a modern recipe. If you paid attention to the writing style in the directions, you might wonder why your cookbook is barking at you like a drill sergeant who can't be bothered to use complete sentences.
"Whisk eggs until well beaten!"
"Fold in cheese!"
"Simmer 8 minutes or until thickened!"
But wait. In any other context, if I told you, "Whisk eggs" you might ask, "Which eggs? All of them? And why are you talking so weirdly and leaving out words like 'the'?" But in the kitchen, we don't just accept clipped, bossy language; we actually expect it. This type of writing is what linguists sometimes call the "instructional register" or "imperative-omissive" style.
So, let's take a closer look at why your favorite recipes sound so different from "normal" English, how they evolved from medieval sticky notes into scientific blueprints, and why the word "recipe" itself is actually a 2,000-year-old command.
To understand the imperative-omissive style, we can break it down into its grammatical ingredients: the imperative and, you guessed it, the omissive.
The imperative is the mood we use for commands. You probably learned early on that a complete sentence needs a verb and a subject. So if you want someone to whisk the eggs, you might say something like: "Now you should whisk the eggs." But in the imperative, the subject "you" is understood. You already know that "you" are following the recipe, so the subject is implied and "whisk eggs" becomes fine.
And then there's the "omissive" part. In a recipe, we usually drop "determiners," which are words like "the" that come before nouns to help clarify their reference. So, a normal sentence might be something like, "You should fold the cheese into the batter and pour it into a greased 8-inch baking pan." But the recipe version is shorthand: "Fold in cheese. Pour into greased 8-inch baking pan."
We've taken out "the," which is the article. And we've also removed the object — "it." Linguists sometimes call this "object drop." It's not something we typically do in more formal or even everyday English. Unless the speaker is a toddler, you don't hear people just say "I like" without specifying what they like, unless it's really obvious. But in the specialized world of instructions like recipes, dropping objects is the gold standard.
But recipes haven't always sounded crisp and efficient. In fact, older recipes could be surprisingly chatty. They were usually written for experienced household cooks, so they could also be super vague and would have baffled a beginner.
They worked more like reminders scrawled on a sticky note than actual instructions, so measurements were inconsistent and details like cooking times were rarely included. Medieval recipes might tell readers something like "boil until it be enough." But that raises some important questions — enough of what? Or enough for whom? The earliest recipes assumed you'd inherited generations of kitchen knowledge.
So, why did we eventually settle on a more clipped, no-nonsense style? It's not because cookbook authors can't write in complete sentences. In fact, you’ve probably seen jokes about recipe blogs making you scroll through someone’s life story before revealing how many eggs you’ll need. But food bloggers usually write those long introductions for search engines, not just to torture impatient cooks.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, cookbooks became more widely available to middle-class families. So instead of being memory aids for experienced cooks, they needed to function more as standalone instructions for ordinary people. And that kicked off a shift toward standardizing recipe writing.
If your family had a Fannie Farmer cookbook, you actually had a book from a major player in the transformation of recipe writing. She's sometimes called "the mother of level measurement," and she has a fascinating backstory. Farmer was born in 1857. As a teenager, she had a paralytic stroke that forced her to quit school, and she ended up helping in the kitchen at her family's boarding house, which became known for its delicious food. At age 30, Farmer enrolled in the Boston Cooking School, and at the time, domestic science was all the rage, so the school approached cooking with less of a "measure with your heart" approach and more like something that could be studied scientifically. In 1896, she published the "Boston Cooking School Cookbook," which helped to standardize recipe measurements with precise cups and teaspoons, transforming them from loose guidance into step-by-step instructions that home cooks could easily follow.
And as recipes got more technical, the language also became more abrupt and action-oriented:
"Beat eggs."
"Add flour."
The goal wasn't beautiful prose; it was usability. Which means recipe grammar isn't weird or broken English; it's just optimized.
And that brings us back to the word "recipe" itself. Recipes used to be called by another name: "receipts!" Both "recipe" and "receipt" come from the Latin recipere, meaning "to receive" or "to take," but "recipe" is specifically the imperative form: "Take!" That makes sense when you realize that medieval apothecaries used to write prescriptions that often began with the word "recipe" followed by a list of ingredients to "take" in combination for medicinal purposes, a lot like a list of ingredients in a recipe today. In fact, the symbol we associate with pharmacies comes from an abbreviation of "recipe" — an uppercase R with a line through the leg, which eventually became the Rx symbol you see on your doctor's prescription pad today.
But outside of your local pharmacy, centuries later, your lasagna recipe is still bossing you around with basically the same grammatical mood: Strain noodles, add cheese, bake at 350 until bubbly.
But what about those incomplete phrases like "Pour into pan"? Pour what into which pan? That's the beauty of recipes; they include ingredient lists and step-by-step instructions, so the missing pieces are understood automatically. You've just whipped up a batter, so that's what you pour into the pan your recipe already told you to grease and flour.
Linguists sometimes call this a "reduced register," which is a specialized kind of language that strips away unnecessary elements to make accomplishing a task more efficient. And recipes aren't the only place we do this, of course. Headlines, instruction manuals, and more use the same sort of structure: "Local teacher wins award." "Insert tab A into slot B."
So, recipes became standardized, and many publishers have internal recipe style guides the same way newspapers have editorial style guides. Some of the standards include things like the ingredient order matching the usage order, standard measurements, and sequential directions cooks can follow step-by-step.
In the end, recipe writing is just another example of how flexible English can be. We can drop subjects, articles, and even objects and still understand written text as long as we share the same context.
Finally, I have a familect story from Heather:
"Hi Mignon, this is Heather. I have a familect for you. From my mom's side of the family, we say it's all 'gone to harpity,' meaning we're out of something — out of supplies or groceries or something like that. When my mom was young, they lived near a store called Harper's, and so when they were out of something, I assume, you know, someone would say, 'We'll get it from Harper's,' but as kids do, it got garbled up to 'all gone to harpity.' So we still say when something's missing that we needed, 'Oh, it's gone to harpity.' So we know to put it on the list. We don't live near a Harper's anymore of, course, but the meaning is the same."
Thanks, Heather! That's a great one. I love it.
Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to Nat Hoopes; Morgan Christianson; Rebekah Sebastian; Dan Feierabend; Maram Elnagheeb; Steven Schapansky; and Holly Hutchings, who wants a puppy but won't get one because she likes her sleep too much.
And I'm Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl.
That's all. Thanks for listening.