The phrase mind your P's and Q's had nautical beginnings as a method of keeping books on the waterfront. In the days of sail when Sailors were paid a pittance, seamen drank their ale in taverns whose keepers were willing to extend credit until payday. Since many salts were illiterate, keepers kept a tally of pints and quarts consumed by each Sailor on a chalkboard behind the bar. Next to each person's name, a mark was made under "P" for pint or "Q" for quart whenever a seaman ordered another draught. On payday, each seaman was liable for each mark next to his name, so he was forced to "mind his P's and Q's" or he would get into financial trouble. To ensure an accurate count by unscrupulous keepers, Sailors had to keep their wits and remain somewhat sober. Sobriety usually ensured good behavior, hence the meaning of "mind your P's and Q's."

I know this one a long time ago beer use to be served in pint and quart glasses and when the drunks would get out of hand the bar tender would yell out mind your p's and q's.

I was raised that Ps & Qs were your manners, or your Please and Thank Yous (Qs). I guess there is also another definition of watching your Pints and Quarts, as in not spilling your brew while drinking and getting rowdy.

may be because p and q are mirror images to each other. also abbreviation of "mind your Please's and ThankYou's".

There's no historically absolute answer to this question, though there are several theories. It could be that seamen used to keep tabs open and taverns and monthly had to pay up, minding their p's and q's (pints and quarts). It could be that pub owners chided those who'd had a bit too much to drink, admonishing them to mind their p's and q's. I t could also be that is was a warning to those who might overindulge and get sloppy with their money that they should mind their p's (pounds) and qs (quid), lest they make mistakes and get ripped off. It could also be that it's a reminder to mind their pleases and thank you's. Howver, that's probably a later use of the phrase.

Watch your p's and q's means to behave. To remember your manners and respect those around you. As too watch your tone, words, gas passing, etc.

Mind your manners Pleases and thankyous

It goes back to England's pubs. P's are Pints and Q's are Quarts. If you don't keep track, you owe the till at night's end.

watch your manners

This could just be urban legend, but I believe the origins are from bartending. If a bartender was getting too nosy or chummy with the customer, he would be told to "mind his p's and q's", short for "pints" and "quarts". Again, this is just what I heard, don't quote me on it.

Mind your Ps and Qs: Meaning - Be on your best behaviour; be careful of your language. Ps and Qs are just the plural of the letters P and Q. There some disagreement amongst grammarians about how to spell Ps and Qs - either upper-case or lower-case and either with or without a hyphen. You may see the phrase as mind your p's and q's or mind your Ps and Qs or (occasionally) mind your P's and Q's or (rarely) as mind your ps and qs. As well as the spelling, the original meaning is also in doubt. Francis Grose, in his 1785 edition of The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, defines it like this: "To mind one's P's and Q's; to be attentive to the main chance." Origin The date of the coinage of mind your Ps and Qs is uncertain. The OED used to print a citation from 1779 but, as they have now withdrawn it from the online version of the dictionary, presumably they consider it unreliable. So, the meaning, spelling and coinage of the phrase are all debatable. Now we come to what is really uncertain - the derivation. Nevertheless, it is one of those phrases that people know the origin of. When pressed all that really means is that the person they heard explain the origin had made a random choice from the list of proposed derivations below. As no one knows the origin I'll just list those suggestions - mind your ps and qs probably derives from one of these: - Mind your pints and quarts. This is suggested as deriving from the practise of chalking up a tally of drinks in English pubs (on the slate). Publicans had to make sure to mark up the quart drinks as distinct from the pint drinks. This explanation is widely repeated but there's little to support it, apart from the fact that pint and quart begin with p and q. - Advice to printer’s apprentices to avoid confusing the backward-facing metal type lowercase Ps and Qs. I've never heard any suggestion that printer should mind their ds and bs though, even though that has the benefit of rhyming, which would have made it a more attractive slogan. - Mind your pea (jacket) and queue (wig). Pea jackets were short, rough woollen overcoats, commonly worn by sailors in the 18th century. Perruques were full wigs worn by fashionable gentlemen. It is difficult to imagine the need for an expression to warn people to avoid confusing them. - Mind your pieds (feet) and queues (wigs). This is suggested to have been an instruction given by French dancing masters to their charges. This has the benefit of placing the perruque in the right context - so long as we accept the phrase as being originally French. There's no reason to suppose it is from France and no version of the phrase exists in French. - It is advice to children learning to write to take care not to mix up the lower-case letters p and q. Again, the 'd' and 'b' counter argument applies. - It derived as reminder to children to be polite. This is supposed to be as a form of 'mind your pleases and thank-yous' - 'mind you pleases and kyous'. Pretty far-fetched that one. - P and q stands for "prime quality." There is, or rather was as this now seems to have also been withdrawn, a 1612 citation which links PQ with 'prime quality'. If that's the origin why isn't the phrase mind your PQ? http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/248000.html Practice good manners, be precise and careful in one's behavior and speech, as in Their grandmother often told the children to mind their p's and q's. The origin of this expression, first recorded in 1779, is disputed. Among the more interesting theories advanced is that bartenders kept track of customers' consumption in terms of pints (p's) and quarts (q's) and the phrase referred to an honest accounting; that schoolchildren were taught to be careful in distinguishing the letters p and q; and that French dancing masters cautioned pupils about the correct performance of the figures pieds and queues (either abbreviated or mispronounced in English as p's and q's). http://www.answers.com/topic/mind-one-s-p-s-and-q-s A puzzling and quirky idiom In the UK, the phrase means to mind one’s manners or to behave properly. This reflects its historical meaning. However, in the US, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it can also mean to be alert, to be on one’s toes, to be on top form. Many explanations have been advanced down the decades to explain this puzzling expression. It is said to be advice to a child learning its letters to be careful not to mix up the handwritten lower-case letters p and q, or similar advice to a printer’s apprentice, for whom the backward-facing metal type letters would be especially confusing. One has to wonder why p and q were singled out, when similar problems occur with b and d. Others have argued that, closely fitting the “mind your manners” sense, it might just have been an abbreviation of mind your pleases and thank-yous, a view advanced in particular by some dictionaries. We may leave out of account more fanciful suggestions, such that it was an instruction from a French dancing master to be sure to perform the dance figures pieds and queues accurately, that it was an admonishment to seamen not to soil their navy pea-jackets with their tarred queues (their pigtails), or that it was jocular, or perhaps deadly serious, advice to a barman not to confuse the letters p and q on the tally slate, on which the letters stood for the pints and quarts consumed “on tick” by the patrons, even though men did indeed at one time consume beer by the quart. To confuse the matter somewhat, we also have examples of a closely similar expression, P and Q or pee and kew. This was seventeenth-century slang and meant “highest quality”; it was later recorded in dialect (the English Dialect Dictionary reports it in Victorian times from Shropshire and Herefordshire). The Oxford English Dictionary has a citation from Rowlands’ Knave of Harts of 1612: “Bring in a quart of Maligo, right true: And looke, you Rogue, that it be Pee and Kew.” Nobody is really sure what either P or Q stood for. To say they’re the initials of “Prime Quality” seems to be folk etymology, because surely that would make “PQ” rather than “P and Q”. Investigations by the Oxford English Dictionary in 2007 when revising the entry turned up early examples of the use of Ps and Qs to mean learning the alphabet. The first is in a poem by Charles Churchill, published in 1763: “On all occasions next the chair / He stands for service of the Mayor, / And to instruct him how to use / His A’s and B’s, and P’s and Q’s.” The conclusion must be that this is the true origin. http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/psandqs.htm We were sitting in a rural English pub enjoying a few pints when John advised us to "mind our Ps and Qs." John was our coach driver on our three-week journey. He was our ambassador to all things English and became a surrogate dad. A few of us had heard "minding our Ps and Qs" before, but it is not exactly part of the American vernacular. It's something a mom or teacher would occasionally say if they wanted a kid to mind their manners. So we gathered that he was telling us to behave ourselves, English-style. John explained to us that the phrase originated in a pub much like the one we were enjoying. Ps and Qs referred to the pints and quarts customers were served. If a customer was rowdy after a few too many drinks, he was told to mind his Ps and Qs. While we were more likely to be drinking the pints and half-pints of modern times (although I'm sure a number of my classmates could have easily undertaken a quart of Strongbow or Blackthorn), John was indeed telling us to keep ourselves in check. There are actually a number of theories on this quaint little phrase, and no one can be sure which exactly is true. "Mind your Ps and Qs" has been in use since the 17th or 18th century (at least 1779, when it was first recorded),1, 7 but its true meaning is as mysterious as its origin. Pints and Quarts John's pub theory of Ps and Qs is the most popular one among speculators. Pubs did indeed serve ale in pints and quarts. The drinker's tab would be kept on a chalkboard, where the barkeep would make a mark for each pint or quart that the customer drank. A dishonest pub keeper could easily take advantage of this tally system to pad his evening's income. The larger quart was more expensive than a pint, and a bartender could mark down a quart even if he had only served a pint. Customers who were not careful might end up paying for more than they actually drank. Telling someone to mind their Ps and Qs was warning them to keep an eye on their server to avoid paying for drinks they did not have. It also meant that customers should watch their alcohol intake and, in turn, their behavior. The more they drank, the less able they would be to keep tabs on what they drank, making them easy targets. Along these lines, an unruly customer might also be told to mind his Ps and Qs. Telling someone to mind their Ps and Qs was the appropriate way to tell them they had had too much to drink. It was also bartender-speak for "don't forget to pay your bill before you stumble out of here." http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1361596

Maddock is partly correct. P’s n Q’s: does mean Mind your Pints and Quarts. In Pubs when people would start arguing, the bartenders would tell them to mind their own drinks... being pints and quarts. Hence forth parents began telling their children that when they would act up or fight.

pulsars, and quasars.

language manners

I think it's from the old days, when bartenders used to tell drunk men to mind their pints and quarts. Meaning, don't start a drunken fight in my bar.

theyre telling you to speak nicely, sound your h's and pronounce your t's and dont swear etc

Basically, it means to mind your manners, and to be polite.

they are saying, mind your own beeswax.

I always thought it meant to pay attention to detail, but apparently none knows for sure what it means http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ps_and_Qs

P's are your 'please's...and Q's are your 'thank you's. Mind your manners, in other words.

it mean sit down, shut up, and stop bothering me

This expression, meaning "be very careful to behave correctly", has been in use from the 17th century on. Theories include: an admonishment to children learning to write; an admonishment to typesetters (who had to look at the letters reversed); an admonishment to seamen not to soil their navy pea-jackets with their tarred "queues" (pigtails); "mind your pints and quarts"; "mind your prices and quality"; "mind your pieds and queues" (either feet and pigtails, or two dancing figures that had to be accurately performed); the substitution of /p/ for "qu" /kw/ in the speech of uneducated ancient Romans; or the confusion by students learning both Latin and Ancient Greek of such cognates as "pente" and "quintus". And yes, we've heard the joke about the instruction to new sextons: "Mind your keys and pews." The most plausible explanation is the one given in the latest edition of Collins English Dictionary: an alteration of "Mind your 'please's and 'thank you's". http://stason.org/TULARC/languages/english-usage/158-mind-your-p-s-and-q-s-Phrase-origins-alt-usage-engl.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%27s_and_Q%27s Apparently, bar owners used to tell drunk people to mind their Ps and Qs, or pints and quarts.

it comes from when newspapers had to manually set the print with individual letter stamps...the p's and q's were getting mixed up....hence the phrase "mind your p's and q's"

Chose your poison ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P's_and_Q's (I have always favored the typesetter's admonition. The others all seem far-fetched.)

silly it means whatch what you are saying that cocks are black and vaginas are purple and your mouth is a bacteria infested place, dirtier then a dgos, AND DOGS LICK THEIR BALLS. hahahahahha,