Where did this saying come from?!


Question: Where did this saying come from!?
"Mind your P's and Q's"Www@Enter-QA@Com


Answers:
In England hundreds of years ago when drinkers got rowdy in a pub the bartender would say - mind your pints and quarts - so people would calm down and behave and not spill their drinksWww@Enter-QA@Com

The expression 'mind you p's and q's , meaning be careful and your words and behavior, dates back many centuries!. Various sources come up with various explanations: The least likely says that the 'p' refers to the jacket once worn by men and now surviving only in the navy peag jacket!. In the 16th and 17th centuries often wore their hair bound into queues or pigtails, often powdered!. Thus a wife might tell her husband to 'mind your p and q!. meaning to keep his queue from soiling the collar of his pea jacket!.
A more likely and more lusty explanation takes us to the pubs of the same period!. There it was the practice to record a drinker's tab by chalking it on a blackboard under 2 headings: Q for quart and P for pint!. Obvious each drinker (Morris' dictionary of etymolgy says each tosspot) had best mind his p's and q's or the bill would greatly favor the house
A third (and preferred) explanation is less colorful: Try writing the small p and the small q side by side!. The letters are identical excpt that the upper portions are reversed!. So the odds are that the expression mind your p's and q's originated with generations of writing teachers instucting their students to take special care in forming these 2 letters!.Www@Enter-QA@Com

It comes from the old days when printers had to set the type in the blocks by hand , the lower case p and q were easily confused because the type was set in reverse to print !.Www@Enter-QA@Com

In the days of manual letterpress printing, you had to be able to recognise back-to-front type!. The most common mistake made by apprentices was to get the lower case p and q mixed up!.Www@Enter-QA@Com



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