Have you ever described something as ��the bee��s knees��? It��s a common saying which means something is great or amazing. It also makes zero sense. Bees don��t even have knees, let alone great ones! In truth, the phrase was coined during the 1920s, when many similarly silly animal sayings like ��the cat��s pajamas�� were popular. But it��s not just our honey-making friends that we talk nonsense about.
Imagine playing soccer on a hot day. You��re dripping with sweat. One might say you��re ��sweating like a pig.�� But pigs don��t sweat like people. They can��t because they don��t have working sweat glands. The saying actually comes from iron smelting. A smelter would know that a piece of ��pig iron,�� a crude type of iron, was ready to move when it started to ��sweat,�� that is, water beads would form on its surface.
Another strange saying is ��cute as a bug��s ear.�� Bugs don��t really have ears that we can see, and what we can see certainly isn��t cute. This saying came about in the seventeenth century when ��cute�� meant ��o hear well�� which is without a doubt a more suitable term for sharp-eared bugs!
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