Professor Bertram Potts is the youngest of eight bookish academics assembling a dictionary of slang. They find a perfect "research associate" in the curvaceous form of strip-tease dancer Kathryn "Sugar Puss" O'Shea, who has hidden out at the professors' domicile to escape Joe Lilac, her gangster boyfriend. As Sugar Puss interprets various slang expressions, she and the professors grow quite fond of one another. She brings their personalities out from under their collegiate facades, while they revive her essential decency and genial womanhood. When Joe and his enforcer Duke Pastrami show up to claim Kathryn, the professors save the day.