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Learn the meaning and origin of the phrase 'Mind your Ps and Qs', which means to be on your best behaviour or careful of your language. Explore the different theories and sources of this expression, from pubs to printing to wigs.
Mind your Ps and Qs is an English language expression meaning "mind your manners", "mind your language", "be on your best behaviour", or "watch what you're doing". Attempts at explaining the origin of the phrase go back to the mid-19th century.
Learn the meaning and usage of the old-fashioned idiom mind your p's and q's, which means to be especially polite in a situation. See examples, synonyms, translations and related words.
- The Basic Politeness Theory
- The Scribal abbreviation Theory
- The Pigtail and Overcoat Theory
- The French Country Dancing Theory
- The Let’s All Have A Drink Theory
- The Handwriting/Typesetting Theory
Probably the most widely held explanation also happens to be the most straightforward: p’s sounds a bit like “please,” q’s sounds a bit like “thank yous,” so to mind your p’s and q’s ultimately means “to mind your good manners.” It’s a neat idea, but it’s not a particularly reliable one: There isn’t enough textual evidence to support it, which sugg...
A much less well-known explanation suggests that your p’s and q’s might actually have their origins way back when handwritten Latin documents were still being widely compiled and interpreted. Latin is a tough enough language to get your head around at the best of times, but in the Medieval period, scholars and scribes were seemingly determined to m...
The earliest record we have of someone’s p’s and q’s comes from a snappily titled Jacobean stage play called Satiromastix, or The Untrussing of the Humorous Poet written by the English playwright Thomas Dekker in 1601. The line in questionreads, “Now thou art in thy Pee and Kue, thou hast such a villanous broad backe.” Both Dekker’s unusual spellin...
Forget the pea-coat for a second. Imagine instead that you’re wearing your favorite queue-peruke while simultaneously learning to dance a courtly French jig. You’d understandably have to be careful not to hit the other dancers in the face with the tail end of your peruke as you were paying close attention to your feet. And the French word for foot?...
In 1607, five years after the publication of Satiromastix, Dekker published another play called Westward Hoe. It contains the line, “at her p. and q. neither Marchantes [merchant’s] daughter, Aldermans wife, young countrey Gentle-woman, nor Courtiers Mistris [mistress], can match her.” Same author, same phrase. But very different spelling. The Oxfo...
This is the explanation Merriam-Webster ascribes to: Children being taught to read and write commonly mix up their lowercase p’s and lowercaseq’s, so telling them to “mind their p’s and q’s” means telling them to be extra careful, so as not to make a mistake. Similarly, another theory suggests that the originalp’s and q’s might have been the indivi...
Learn the meaning of the old-fashioned idiom mind your p's and q's, which means to be especially polite in a situation. See examples, synonyms, translations and related words.
mind your p's and q's. idiom old-fashioned. Add to word list. to make an effort to be especially polite in a particular situation: I have to mind my p's and q's when I'm with my grandmother. SMART Vocabulary: Verwandte Wörter und Ausdrücke. Manners & levels of formality. button-down. buttoned-up. casualization. ceremoniously. formally. genteelly.
P's and q's are plural nouns that mean something (such as one's manners) that one should be mindful of. They come from the phrase mind one's p's and q's, alluding to the difficulty a child learning to write has in distinguishing between p and q.
