where did the expression mind your p's and q's come from?

Answer 1

some people say it's becausee
An admonishment to seamen not to soil their navy pea-jackets with their tarred queues, that is, their pigtails.
Advice to a child learning its letters to be careful not to mix up the handwritten lower-case letters p and q.
Similar advice to a printer’s apprentice, for whom the backward-facing metal type letters would be especially confusing.
etc

Answer 2

There are many theories.
Some explanations for "mind your p's and q's" include:
1) It originated in British pubs as an abbreviation for "mind your pints and quarts." Supposedly this warned the barkeep to serve full measure, mark the customer's tab accurately, etc.

2) It meant "mind your pea (jacket) and queue." Queues (pigtails) were often powdered, and wifeypoo was telling hubby to keep the cruddy kid stuff off his collar. An even dumber variation of this involves "pieds," French for "feet," and says minding your p's and q's means combing your hair and polishing your shoes, or something like that.

3) P and q stands for "prime quality." According to the Oxford English Dictionary, to be P and Q was a regional expression meaning top quality. It first shows up in a bit of doggerel from 1612: "Bring in a quart of Maligo, right true: And looke, you Rogue, that it be Pee and Kew."

4) The simplest explanation is that the expression refers to the difficulty kids have distinguishing lower-case p and q, mirror images of each other. Mind your you-know-whats was thus a teacher's admonition to students.

Answer 3

Regard the California type case. It is the kind of type case that holds individual letter forms of a certain size and font. Each letter looks like the mirror image of itself because when it is inked and printed onto paper, the image printed will be the correct way round.
P's and q's look like each other's mirror image.
Mind your p's and q's means check, check, and re-check any type you set so that the p's aren't mixed in with the q's.

Answer 4

It came from the ancient Celtic languages. Some Celtic tribes used whet is called a p-Celtic dialect and other tribes used a q-Celtic dialect. when the tribes would meet sometimes it created a conflict cause of the meanings of words in their respective languages, and sometimes wars broke out.

Answer 5

in old city pubs, the bartender would keep track of peoples' tabs ona big blackboard: P=pint, Q=quart
if you were impolite of rude, you'd often get p's or q's added to yer tab.
likewise, trainee barmaids were often told to "shut up and min the p's and q's"

Answer 6

The general thought is that it comes from pub days, admonishing the bar help to note down the number of p(ints) and q(uarts) that were sold that day

Answer 7

From the old English pubs and it stood for mind your pints and quarts or else you'd be thrown out for being drunk.

Answer 8

it was a nautical term

Answer 9

I have no idea...great question though!!!