The Language-Lover's Lexipedia, by Joshua Blackburn. I learned of this wonderful book via the podcast and YouTube channel Words Unravelled, and it is an absolute joy.
The breadth and depth of Mr Backburn's research and scholarship are simply stunning, but at the same time he manages to maintain a light and playful tone. To give a flavour of the book here's a potted version of just one of the 200+ entries, from Abracadabra to Zyzzyva.
We've all heard of the Bee's Knees and the Cat's Pyjamas I suppose, and perhaps also the Duck's Quack, although that's less familiar. But until now I never real stopped to wonder where they came from. Turns out they were Flapper slang.
When I think about Flappers I have a hazy vision of the Roaring Twenties and bobbed hair style and the Charleston and all that sort of thing. Merriam-Webster's more informed definition is " a young woman predominantly of the 1910s and 1920s who showed freedom from conventions (as in style of dress and conduct)".
And they also had their own Flapper-Speak which included a craze for phrases consisting of the name of an animal followed by something mildly surprising or incongruous (the Duck' Quack is an outlier here). Mr Blackburn has dug up a whole bunch of examples, forgotten now apart from the three I gave above. Here are some of my favourites:
The Bullfrog's Beard
The Clam's Garters
The Eel's Ankle
The Hen's Eyebrows
The Kipper's Knickers
And if you fancy a Bee's Knees cocktail Mr Blackburn has found the recipe.
Picture credit: Copilot 27 November 2025