What Does Watch Your P S And Q S Mean

Mind your ps and qs is an english language expression meaning mind your manners mind your language be on your best behaviour watch what you re doing.

I worked for a printer back in the early 70 s that still used lead type when he did business cards. To mind one s p s and q s. This expression may originally have been a warning to children not to confuse p s and q s when learning the alphabet. To be polite and well behaved.

She always minded her p s and q s in front of the queen but their relationship wasn t that close. Much more likely is that p and q stands for pints and quarts in which case the phrase might originally have referred to a landlord totting up a customer s tab or to a drinker being told to mind. I ve opted for ps and qs. Attempts at explaining the origin of the phrase go back to the mid 19th century.

You may see the phrase as mind your p s and q s or mind your ps and qs or mind your p s and q s or less often as mind your ps and qs. Mind your ps and qs can mean to be careful vigilant or more often polite. The correct way to say the expression to watch your p s and q s is to mind your p s and q s. Watch your ps and qs.

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For example a mother might mention that aunt gertrude is a stickler for manners and the children had better mind their ps and qs when she visits. To be attentive to the main chance. I had to comment on your watch your p s and q s. The mother reminded her young children to mind their p s and q s when they went over to their friends houses for play dates.

Reminding someone to watch his. There are several suggested origins for the phrase which often differ from the way it is now used. Francis grose in his 1785 edition of the dictionary of the vulgar tongue defines it like this. 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.

It means to watch the details. Watch your p s and q s if you mind your p s and q s or watch your p s and q s you try to speak and behave politely. So it s a printing axiom for paying attention to detail. Way back in time when printers would physically set up type to print something they d have to watch to make sure they had not reversed their p s and q s which was an easy printing mistake.

The p s in the expression to mind your p s and q s refer to the pints and the q s in the expression to mind your p s and q s are said to be the quarts. The expression to mind your p s and q s means to be careful or cautious. To mind one s manners. Doubts also exist as to the original meaning.

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One explanation favoured in a letter to the editors of notes and queries dated 1851 is a literal.