where did the quote watch your p's and q's originate?
149120
Old english bar owners.  Figuring out evenings profits by measuring their "pints and quarts" sold vs. inventory left to insure there wasn't waste or thievery.\n\nBTW - "whet your whistle" came from the same time period where beer mugs used to literally have a whistle on them.  Patrons would blow them when they wanted the bar wench to refill their steins with more beer!  :)  (And now you know the REST of the story)....
910600
The phrase is "mind your p's and q's."  It means to be careful and pay attention to detail.  It comes from the old days when we used printing presses and the p's and q's looked similar and would often times get mixed up.
773456
some of these sayings start out from exactly what it says.  somebody was probably eating an apple and it was either really tasteful or really disgusting and somebody was probably witnessing and made the comment "how do u like them apples?"
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http://www.questia.com/PM.qst;jsessionid=DCchThVQx3t1RxjjTYkzLh2Qr83s6l32QPGpqTylLlMk81VLlnNs!613\nhttp://www.lafayette.edu/news.php/view/8413\nhttp://www.questia.com/PM.qst;jsessionid=DCchThVQx3t1RxjjTYkzLh2Qr83s6l32QPGpqTylLlMk81VLlnNs!613\nhttp://www.accessmylibrary.com/comsite5/bin/comsite5.pl?page=library&item_id=0286-6067267\nhope this helps\narticles with quotes by authors
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http://www.quotationspage.com/
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Just in case you didn't catch it when 6 people said the same thing before, the answer to your question is:\n\nthe origin
256992
Here's a good example:\n \n-----x----\nBe sure to read all the way to the end..... it's worth! \n  \nNext time someone starts to spread gossip, think of this: \n\nIn ancient Greece (469 - 399 BC), Socrates was widely lauded for his wisdom. \n\nOne day the great philosopher came upon an acquaintance who ran up to him excitedly and said, "Socrates, do you know what I just heard about one of your students?" \n\nWait a moment," Socrates replied. "Before you tell me I'd like you to pass a little test.It's called the Triple Filter Test." \n\n"Triple filter?" \n\n"That's right," Socrates continued. "Before you talk to me about my student let's take a moment to filter what you're going to say. The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?" \n\n"No," the man said, "actually I just heard about it and..." \n\n"All right," said Socrates. "So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my student something good?" \n\n"No, on the contrary..." \n\n"So," Socrates continued, "you want to tell me something bad about him, even though you're not certain it's true?" \n\nThe man shrugged, a little embarrassed. \n\nSocrates continued. "You may still pass the test though,because there is a third filter - the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my student going to be useful to me?" \n\n"No, not really..." \n\n"Well," concluded Socrates, "if what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even Useful,why tell it to me at all?" \n\nThe man was defeated and ashamed. \n\nThis is the reason Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem. \n \nIt also explains why he never found out that Plato (his student) was having an affair with his wife. \n                          \n--x--\n\nHope that helps.
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I don't know if there's much etymology of the phrase, but here's an article about it which puts forth some interesting possibilities of the origin.\n\nQuote from the site:\n\n"Some linguists and historians think the expression must have been well known during the war years, citing a story about General Eisenhower's dog. The story goes that the dog (Felix) urinated on a map and the officers joked that the enemy was "pissed off." (Leonard Mosely, Marshall, 1982)."
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http://www.moviequotes.com/repository.cgi?pg=3&tt=47814
577298
What started this particular line of inquiry?
816472
Sate H They are Talking about you...!!\nhttp://www.osoq.com/funstuff/extra/extra03.asp?strName=Sate_H
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This quote comes from Orwells book "1984". He wrote the book so I assume he is the source of the quote.
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There are at least two possible origins, and both seem pretty believable:\n\nFirst: In the days of sailing ships when Sailors were paid a pittance, seamen drank their ale in taverns whose keepers were willing to extend credit until payday. Since many of he sailors were illiterate, inn 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. \n\nOn 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." \n\nSecond: "Mind your P's and Q's" is thought to have originated with printers who set headlines using movable type. If you've ever seen old type, you know the letters are mirror images of the regular alphabet. Lower-case P's look like Q's and vice versa. "Mind your P's and Q's" was a reminder not to mix up the letters when putting them back in the rack after use.
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Probably 2.\n\nMIND YOUR PS AND QS\n\nA puzzling and quirky idiom\n\nThere has recently been a discussion on the Usenet newsgroup alt.usage.english about this somewhat outdated saying. As so often happens, a series of posters have recounted the explanations they’ve heard about its origins without really advancing the discussion. It would be difficult to reach a conclusion in any case, as the facts to base it on have been lost. All we can do is theorise, which can be fun, but it does tend to generate more heat than light. Here, for what its worth, are the facts so far as I know them.\n\nIts meaning in recent times—and the one I learned as a child in west London nearly 50 years ago—has been “to mind one’s manners”, “to behave properly”. This is a weakened sense to the one it had in the nineteenth century, when it meant, according to Eric Partridge in A Dictionary of Historical Slang: “to be careful, exact, or prudent in behaviour”.\n\nThese are some of the explanations I’ve seen advanced in various places:\n\n    * Advice to a child learning its letters to be careful not to mix up the handwritten lower-case letters p and q.\n    * Similar advice to a printer’s apprentice, for whom the backward-facing metal type letters would be especially confusing.\n    * 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.\n    * An abbreviation of mind your please’s and thank-you’s.\n    * Instructions from a French dancing master to be sure to perform the dance figures pieds and queues accurately.\n    * An admonishment to seamen not to soil their navy pea-jackets with their tarred queues, that is, their pigtails.\n\nIt is possible to put forward objections to all of these. Why should p and q be singled out for attention in handwriting, when similar problems occur with b and d? This comment might be thought to apply with even greater force to the poor printer’s apprentice. The pints and quarts explanation sounds reasonable, provided that men in bars used to drink beer by the quart, as in fact they did. The French dancing-master explanation sounds just too far-fetched to be credible, as does the one about the seamen. The mind your please’s and thank-you’s seems just as unlikely as the others, but is seriously advanced by some dictionaries, the current edition of the Collins English Dictionary among them.\n\nThere are two similar usages recorded:\n\n    * There was once an expression P and Q, often written pee and kew, which was a seventeenth-century colloquial expression for “prime quality”. This later became a dialect expression (the English Dialect Dictionary reports it in Victorian times from Shropshire and Herefordshire). OED2 has a citation from Rowlands’ Knave of Harts of 1612:\n    * “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”. Partridge says that the phrase learn your Ps and Qs, was common about 1820, again being advice to children who may be confused about the two letters.\n\nYou may feel the first of these tends to confuse the issue rather than illuminate it, and you may be right. It may just be coincidence. However, the second does tend to support the idea that it relates to children learning their alphabets. If I had to make a choice, I’d plump for the alphabet-learning origin.\n\nWhat we do know is that mind your Ps and Qs was first recorded in 1779 but that it is slowly dying out. To lose it would be a pity, as it is a link to the past and makes a good subject for some quiet speculation and ingenious attempts at explanation. In common with so many words and phrases in English, its origins must remain
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It's probably from Aesop's Fables. That's where most quotes like that come from.
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Where did u hear this from? (place, person)
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We would say "pinch, poke..you owe me a coke"\nI imagine it originated in some play ground somewhere....obviously after coke originated