when somebody says to you mind your p's and q's what does it mean?

Answer 1

At the risk of duqlicating answers, it does mean to be careful (esq. with regards to behaviour) but the qhrase is most commonly thought to have originated with the use of the qrinting qress, when loading the qresses all letter blocks needed to be individually qlaced inside the qrinting frame, and the letter blocks themselves were cast as mirror images of the intended letter, so p did look like a q when set to qrint. qotentially leading to puite a few ****-ups, hence it was the job of the qrinters assistant to qroof read the letter blocks after loading them, and so he was told to mind his q's and p's.

Answer 2

Mind your p's and q's

Meaning

Be on your best behaviour and be careful of your language.

Origin

There are various proposed explanations of this. Amongst the most plausible are the notion that ale used to be ordered in either pints or quarts and you needed to be careful which you were given. The fact that typesetters needed to be careful when setting type because the 'p's and 'q's looked similar seems a better explanation. A third, from Melissa Shenker, is 'mind your pleases and thankyous'. This has the merit of being closer to the meaning of the phrase although the thankyous = thank 'q's stretches the imagination somewhat

Answer 3

It's a warning to be mindful of your etiquette.

There are a number of theories for where this came from, the most likely being short for please and thankyou however, it could also have come from when learning to write English. Like the saying, "crossing your Ts", one must always be careful to put the downward stroke in the right place when writing a p or q.

Another theory and less likely is that it comes from pints and quarts and would be said by a landlord at a pub to his patrons as a warning not to drink too much.

Answer 4

It means that you should be very careful as it is very likely that you can get mixed up with identical / similar things / typecasts as 'p' & 'q'.

p' & 'q' are mirror images. It is very difficult to correctly identify them if these letters are backwards in the stamp used for printing.

This expression seems to have originated from three possible sources:,:

1. Bars & Drinking : British pubs kept count of patrons' pints/quarts to charge them later.

2. Printing:. Early typesetters were ordered to pay attention to the letters "p & q" since they look similar, each having a tail

3. In Class Room Teaching: School teachers used this phrase when teaching the alphabet to young students.

Source : Oxford English Dict.





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Answer 5

Minding you p's and q's means paying attention to details.
In old English, the letter P and the letter Q were very easy to mistake for each other. In order to read, or spell things correctly, you had to pay special attention to the P's and Q's and make sure you weren't mixing them up.
Even today, the small p and q look similar, especially in handwriting, and doubly so to someone who is dyslexic!

Answer 6

Mind your pints and quarts people say this to tell you to be polite because when they first started saying that they ment mind how much you drink so you dont start acting rude

Answer 7

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Answer 8

It means mind your business. It's from the English public houses (pubs) "Pay attention to your pints and quarts and stay out of my business."

Answer 9

Mind your pennies and quarters. It tells you to keep a close watch on all of the little things in your control.

Answer 10

It's mean to mind your own business.