Meaning
Something or someone excellent, stylish or delightful; the finest of its kind. The expression is dated 1920s slang and survives mainly in playful, retro or ironic use rather than as living youth slang. Dated, jocular slang; sounds retro or ironic rather than current. Regional use: General English (originally American; pyjamas spelling chiefly British).
Origin
It was coined in the United States in the flapper era around 1920 as part of a brief craze for absurd animal superlatives, alongside the bee's knees, the cat's meow, the cat's whiskers, the snake's hips and the kipper's knickers; only the bee's knees and this phrase survive in regular use. The Phrase Finder traces the earliest known example to the Pageland Journal of South Carolina in February 1918, with a 17 July 1919 use in a US Army hospital unit newspaper and Green's Dictionary of Slang first citing the excellence sense in 1921 (Bridgeport Telegram). The cartoonist Tad Dorgan is often credited with coining it, but Wordorigins.org shows he was not the originator, and The Phrase Finder calls the question genuinely open. Cat was also flapper slang for a fashionable young woman, which may have helped the phrase stick. It had crossed to Britain by 1923, appearing in the Daily Herald and, as the cat's whiskers, in Wodehouse.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Usage Examples
- Grandpa still insists that vinyl records are the cat's pyjamas.
- The critics decided the new roadster was the cat's pajamas of the motor show.
- In her beaded dress and cloche hat, she considered herself the cat's pyjamas.