Kirkpatrick, Betty and Kirkpatrick, Elizabeth McLaren (1999) "light fantastic" Clichés: Over 1500 Phrases Explored and Explained Macmillan, New York, page 115, ISBN978-0-312-19844-2
The origin is unclear; it may simply have emerged in imitation of the numerous other animal-related nonsense phrases popular in the 1920s such as "the cat's pyjamas" or "the monkey's eyebrows",[21] or it may be a deliberate inversion of the earlier attested singular "bee's knee" used to refer to something small or insignificant.[22][20]
"jump the gun", Wiktionary, 25 January 2022, retrieved 7 April 2022
