13 thoughts on “Jeanette MacDonald in Monte Carlo”
Just re-read her wikipedia page and the alleged Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy/Gene Raymond love triangle is soap opera-level drama. Surprised it hasn’t been made a television show by Ryan Murphy.
I remember this scene. This was right after she got the full Nelson.
And I’m sure you meant Jeanette
Ah, Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. Known to a dwindling few as the Iron Butterfly and the Singing Capon. (That may be utterly unjust, but I always found it funny.)
They must’ve had really big cats back then if these were their pajamas.
You can’t even imagine how big their bees were, if their knees were considered a symbol of quality.
I always thought that referred to pollen balls. The workers carry nectar back to the hive to make their honey. Bright yellow pollen sticks to the nectar. Which gathers at their joints, lights up their knees like a neon sign. Advertising the sweet spot.
“The phrase ‘the bee’s knees’ was originally an 18th century fanciful phrase which referred to something that didn’t exist. It was used as the kind of spoof item apprentices would be sent to the stores to fetch – like tartan paint or a left-handed hammer. This meaning is no longer used.
In the Roaring Twenties in America, bright young things invented nonsense language to refer to things that were ‘the tops’ – like ‘the cat’s pajamas’, ‘the snake’s hips’ and so on. They utilized the existing ‘bee’s knees’ phrase to add to that list.”
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Like me, you probably have a reason to research etymology from time to time. In more than 50 years of doing so, I have established a firm principle in my mind – the etymology people seem to believe is wrong 100% of the time. So I will accept the above explanation cum grano salis. It may be thoroughly researched and it may not.
Lexico.com, while in general agreement, has a slightly different take on the 18th century meaning:
The phrase was first recorded in the late 18th century, when it was used to mean ‘something very small and insignificant’. Its current meaning dates from the 1920s, at which time a whole collection of American slang expressions were coined with the meaning ‘an outstanding person or thing’. Examples included the flea’s eyebrows, the canary’s tusks, and one that still survives – the cat’s whiskers. The switch in meaning for the bee’s knees probably emerged because it was so similar in structure and pattern to these other phrases.
The singular bee’s knee is attested from the late 18th century meaning something small or insignificant in the phrase big as a bee’s knee. Also as weak as a bee’s knee is attested in Ireland (1870). It is possible that the bee’s knees is a deliberate inversion of this meaning but is not attested.
Here is the entry in the OED:
bee’s knee: (a) a type of something small or insignificant; (b) pl. (slang, orig. U.S.), the acme of excellence; ‘the cat’s whiskers’;
to put the bee on (slang, chiefly U.S.): (a) to quash, put an end to; to beat; (b) to ask for a loan from, to borrow money from
For the record, I have never heard or read “to put the bee on.”
The expression I use for “the tops” is “the bee’s meow.” My girlfriend hates that and all the other unique phrases I create for my own demented enjoyment. She thinks an “idiolect” should mean “language for idiots.”
Count me a fan of your idiolect. If that’s what dementia has in store for me, bring it on.
I received 2 HS accolades that were to enrich my brain in short order. CRC’s Math Tables little blue volume, gold-leaf inscribed with my autograph. And the AHD.
The tables of logs & trig functions are now entirely moot. But there was also text. Mensuration formulas & such-like galore: how to invert a matrix, calculus in matrix form… innumerable, fascinating, if merely elementary, math facts. Here was a modern version of the sought-after spell-books in sorcerers lore.
I used to have favorite things & heroes. Well, I guess I’ve mostly outgrown those habits, but I have to say, I can still see Euler’s work every day, all around us.
And then, as you noted, yes, I’m curious about how a word or phrase came to be so, “from time to time”. It all started with that AHD. The most wonderful of all the dictionaries. I have OED compact edition (with a big magnifying glass in a drawer below) & monstrous Webster’s Unabridged. I love them all, yet seldom consult them anymore. Not that the online sources are that great, but let’s face it, we can’t really do a lot better than adequate. Language is inherently a soft science. To the extent that science is even an appropriate framing.
So, by far, the Usage Notes (the very notion of a Usage Panel) were the best feature. Then there was the etymologies tracing all the way back to proto Indo-European roots. PIE having been derived thru modern linguistics techniques. FKA Comparative Linguistics, now usually Historical Linguistics is to be preferred. The latter’s a bigger umbrella, shifting the emphasis to language change processes. For example, “the great vowel shift”. The modern take on which is finer-grained. It’s seen as a long & gradual series of small changes. I received Robin MacNeil’s “The Story of English” book as a gift from a college buddy who knew me well.
I don’t know if your teachers assailed you with tales of the revolutionary concept of “the zero”, and how negative numbers came to be accepted, originally, with great reluctance. But I’m struck in the same way by the origin of “debt” as “sin”. There’s a connection to slavery in there, too, BTW.
I have no formal background in Latin or Greek. Of course, they’re both ubiquitous in my intellectual areas of curiosity, as well as practical knowledge. And the word histories of the most interest tend to go thru the classics. I know just enough not to need to look up most of the Latin that you sprinkle into your scribblings.
Speaking of which… Modern discussions of “If wishes were fishes” & “If wishes were horses” origins & meaning generally miss an angle that strikes me as culturally important. The ubiquity of fairy tales in Britain & indeed all Europe, a half millennium ago.
The sayings aren’t literally equating the mental thing of a wish to the thing desired. It wasn’t this abstract kind of magic that “for the sake of argument” they were, let’s pretend, real things that just shot out of our eyes. No, many people, especially kids, believed in magical beings who granted wishes. Like Aladdin’s genie who gave him 3 wishes. So, as I see it, there is a subtext that if wishes being granted were really a thing, we’d all be rich because we’d ask for money, & beggars would ride because they’d ask for a horse.
It’s these “magic wishes” that don’t exist, just like the magical beings who grant them don’t. Imagine if they did, what would that look like? Look around. Is that what we see, IRL? No. No, our world isn’t like that. That’s why, when we tell an adult not to expect too much, we say to them, “Grow up!” You’re not a kid anymore. You know Santa Claus isn’t real.
If you combine the two, you have imaginary numbers. The square root of negative one, of course, is ‘i.’ I’m sure you know the story, but for those who think that imaginary numbers are just an academic placeholder, electrical engineering would be impossible without it.
Adam: I agree, partly. I’m persuaded that QM needs complex numbers. For EE, I believe we need 2-vectors & Maxwell’s equations. Knowledge of trig solutions to DEs arguably a must. (ME’s are diff eq’s.) Otherwise, a few formulas & plug-work will carry most of the load. Not a EE, so just IMO. We could say my “firmware” is EE adjacent.
FWIW, @US, your schtick was pretty funny. I especially liked the clever part about DQ’d for cheating. That truly was the Bee’s Meow.
Just re-read her wikipedia page and the alleged Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy/Gene Raymond love triangle is soap opera-level drama. Surprised it hasn’t been made a television show by Ryan Murphy.
I remember this scene. This was right after she got the full Nelson.
And I’m sure you meant Jeanette
Ah, Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. Known to a dwindling few as the Iron Butterfly and the Singing Capon. (That may be utterly unjust, but I always found it funny.)
They must’ve had really big cats back then if these were their pajamas.
You can’t even imagine how big their bees were, if their knees were considered a symbol of quality.
I always thought that referred to pollen balls. The workers carry nectar back to the hive to make their honey. Bright yellow pollen sticks to the nectar. Which gathers at their joints, lights up their knees like a neon sign. Advertising the sweet spot.
According to phrases.uk.org
—-
Like me, you probably have a reason to research etymology from time to time. In more than 50 years of doing so, I have established a firm principle in my mind – the etymology people seem to believe is wrong 100% of the time. So I will accept the above explanation cum grano salis. It may be thoroughly researched and it may not.
Lexico.com, while in general agreement, has a slightly different take on the 18th century meaning:
Wiktionary says:
Here is the entry in the OED:
For the record, I have never heard or read “to put the bee on.”
The expression I use for “the tops” is “the bee’s meow.” My girlfriend hates that and all the other unique phrases I create for my own demented enjoyment. She thinks an “idiolect” should mean “language for idiots.”
Count me a fan of your idiolect. If that’s what dementia has in store for me, bring it on.
I received 2 HS accolades that were to enrich my brain in short order. CRC’s Math Tables little blue volume, gold-leaf inscribed with my autograph. And the AHD.
The tables of logs & trig functions are now entirely moot. But there was also text. Mensuration formulas & such-like galore: how to invert a matrix, calculus in matrix form… innumerable, fascinating, if merely elementary, math facts. Here was a modern version of the sought-after spell-books in sorcerers lore.
I used to have favorite things & heroes. Well, I guess I’ve mostly outgrown those habits, but I have to say, I can still see Euler’s work every day, all around us.
And then, as you noted, yes, I’m curious about how a word or phrase came to be so, “from time to time”. It all started with that AHD. The most wonderful of all the dictionaries. I have OED compact edition (with a big magnifying glass in a drawer below) & monstrous Webster’s Unabridged. I love them all, yet seldom consult them anymore. Not that the online sources are that great, but let’s face it, we can’t really do a lot better than adequate. Language is inherently a soft science. To the extent that science is even an appropriate framing.
So, by far, the Usage Notes (the very notion of a Usage Panel) were the best feature. Then there was the etymologies tracing all the way back to proto Indo-European roots. PIE having been derived thru modern linguistics techniques. FKA Comparative Linguistics, now usually Historical Linguistics is to be preferred. The latter’s a bigger umbrella, shifting the emphasis to language change processes. For example, “the great vowel shift”. The modern take on which is finer-grained. It’s seen as a long & gradual series of small changes. I received Robin MacNeil’s “The Story of English” book as a gift from a college buddy who knew me well.
I don’t know if your teachers assailed you with tales of the revolutionary concept of “the zero”, and how negative numbers came to be accepted, originally, with great reluctance. But I’m struck in the same way by the origin of “debt” as “sin”. There’s a connection to slavery in there, too, BTW.
I have no formal background in Latin or Greek. Of course, they’re both ubiquitous in my intellectual areas of curiosity, as well as practical knowledge. And the word histories of the most interest tend to go thru the classics. I know just enough not to need to look up most of the Latin that you sprinkle into your scribblings.
Speaking of which… Modern discussions of “If wishes were fishes” & “If wishes were horses” origins & meaning generally miss an angle that strikes me as culturally important. The ubiquity of fairy tales in Britain & indeed all Europe, a half millennium ago.
The sayings aren’t literally equating the mental thing of a wish to the thing desired. It wasn’t this abstract kind of magic that “for the sake of argument” they were, let’s pretend, real things that just shot out of our eyes. No, many people, especially kids, believed in magical beings who granted wishes. Like Aladdin’s genie who gave him 3 wishes. So, as I see it, there is a subtext that if wishes being granted were really a thing, we’d all be rich because we’d ask for money, & beggars would ride because they’d ask for a horse.
It’s these “magic wishes” that don’t exist, just like the magical beings who grant them don’t. Imagine if they did, what would that look like? Look around. Is that what we see, IRL? No. No, our world isn’t like that. That’s why, when we tell an adult not to expect too much, we say to them, “Grow up!” You’re not a kid anymore. You know Santa Claus isn’t real.
If you combine the two, you have imaginary numbers. The square root of negative one, of course, is ‘i.’ I’m sure you know the story, but for those who think that imaginary numbers are just an academic placeholder, electrical engineering would be impossible without it.
Adam: I agree, partly. I’m persuaded that QM needs complex numbers. For EE, I believe we need 2-vectors & Maxwell’s equations. Knowledge of trig solutions to DEs arguably a must. (ME’s are diff eq’s.) Otherwise, a few formulas & plug-work will carry most of the load. Not a EE, so just IMO. We could say my “firmware” is EE adjacent.
FWIW, @US, your schtick was pretty funny. I especially liked the clever part about DQ’d for cheating. That truly was the Bee’s Meow.