Ever been told to mind your p’s and q’s? Unless you were working a mechanical printing press at the time, chances are you were fairly subtly being told to mind your manners. But what exactly are your p’s and q’s?
The short answer is that no one really knows. But just because we don’t have a definitive answer doesn’t mean that we don’t have any answers at all. In fact, there are a number of competing theories as to what the original p’s and q’s might have been, some of which are a lot more convincing than others.
THE BASIC POLITENESS 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’sultimately means “to mind your good manners.” It’s a neat idea, but it’s not a particularly reliable one. Unfortunately, there just isn’t enough textual evidence to support it, which suggests this is probably a relatively recent bit of folk etymology, based on the modern interpretation of the phrase p’s and q’s. So if this isn’t right, what is?
THE SCRIBAL ABBREVIATION THEORY
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 make things even harder. In the interests of keeping their texts brief and compact, an elaborate system of scribal abbreviations was employed that saw various combinations of dots, dashes, bars, hooks, tails, stars, and other flourishes and embellishments attached to letters as abbreviations of lengthier words. Anyone reading these texts would have to be careful to interpret these symbols correctly, or else risk misreading or mistranslating—and because P and Q were among the most commonly embellished letters of all, that would naturally involveminding your p’s and q’s.
This is another neat idea that unfortunately falls down both through lack of evidence, and given the fact that the most complex of these scribal abbreviations had long since fallen out of use before the phrase p’s and q’s first appeared in the language. But when exactly was that?
THE PIGTAIL AND OVERCOAT THEORY
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 question reads, “Now thou art in thy Pee and Kue, thou hast such a villanous broad backe.”
Both Dekker’s unusual spellings (pee and kue) and his equally unusual phrasing (“in your p’s and q’s”) has led to suggestions that the original p’s and q’s might have been items of clothing—namely, a sailor’s pea-coat or pea-jacket (a kind of thick, loose-fitting overcoat) and a queue or queue-peruke (a long plait of hair that was once a popular fashion accessoryamong high-ranking naval officers). But how does a sailor’s pea-coat and a naval officer’s wig give us a phrase meaning “mind your manners”? That’s a good question, and it’s not one that can be sufficiently answered—unless, of course, we’ve only got things half right…
