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by chrisdhal
1860 days ago
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It's similar to being "out of sorts", which today (and maybe even historically) means you're not feeling well. It came from letterpress where the case of type is collectively called a "sort" and if you were trying to put together a print run and you ran out of, say, the letter 'r', you are now "out of sorts". |
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> During typesetting, individual sorts are picked from a type case with the right hand, and set into a composing stick held in the left hand from left to right, and as viewed by the setter upside down. As seen in the photo of the composing stick, a lower case 'q' looks like a 'd', a lower case 'b' looks like a 'p', a lower case 'p' looks like a 'b' and a lower case 'd' looks like a 'q'. This is reputed to be the origin of the expression "mind your p's and q's". It might just as easily have been "mind your b's and d's".
The history of typography and printing is lovely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typesetting#Manual_typesetting