Stay On You P's and Q's?

Question

What does the P and Q stand for??

Answer 1

Pints and quarts - see beer used to be served in pints and quarts and when the patrons of the bar would get too rowdy the bartender would say mind your p's and q's.

Answer 2

take your pick..

think this one is most probable....

1) From an old printer's axiom. Back in the early days of printing presses, each line of text had to be set up one letter at a time. Since the letters in the press were reversed (so they'd print forward), the printmaker (or typographer) needed to be careful not to confuse one letter for the other.
Reminding someone to "watch his p's and q's" means to pay attention to the details.

2)Shortening for "Pints and Quarts", which were the two main measurements for drinks. Whereas now we use pints, half pints, shots etc, there used to be Pints and Quarts.

Whhn things got rowdy, as they tend to do in pubs, you'd normally hear something like "Mind your Pints and Quarts" and a warning or some such. this was shortened to "mind your P's and Q's"

3) Was common in post-victorian Britain as an abbreviation of 'to mind your manners' or, more specifically, to say both 'please' (p's) and 'thankyou' (thank-Q).
Thus the phrase 'watch your p's and q's' has been in use to encourage people to speak politely, especially children, who remember such phrases better than just instructions.

Answer 3

Pints and Quarts,they used to keep track of what the sailors were drinking by a chalkboard.Some unscrupulous barkeeps would put a few extra on your tally if you weren`t aware.
Hence"Mind your P`s and Q`s".

Answer 4

I think it stands for Pints and Quarts...for when people got too drunk at bars back in the day

Answer 5

Pints and Quarts (of beer). It's an old English term for when men were drinking in a bar, some one would buy them a beer, and it would be put in front of them. It was impolite to ask who's beer that was, and you could be told to "Mind your own P's and Q's."

Answer 6

Doesn't stand for anything. It has to do with printing. The small letters p and q look alike and in printing they need to be put in backwards/mirror-image (to print properly). So the apprentice in the printing place had to make sure p's are p's and q's are q's. So it means to be careful and observant and exact.

Answer 7

back in the olden days the there was alimit on how much beer you could drink....so the bartender had a chalk board with your name on it and he also had a column for the P (pints) and the Q(quarts) and he had to keep track of what you drank, so he was minding his P's and Q's

Answer 8

Pints and Quarts.
I always knew the saying to be "Mind your P's and Q's."
It's refering to alcohol. but its an old saying and the meaning has diverged from alcohol since then.

Answer 9

Ettiquette question and my fav.

p" standing for "pints" and "q" for quarts

Answer 10

The expression is actually "mind your Ps and Qs", "p" and "q" refer to "pints" and "quarts" respectively.