Talk:on the Q.T.

Etymology?

i think that "q.t." stands for quiet tip. can't find a source for it tho... — This unsigned comment was added by PrettyStraight (talk • contribs) at 00:49, 20 January 2011 (UTC).

In Sherlock Holmes Great War Parodies and Pastiches II: 1915-1919 (2016) By Bill Peschel[1] it is claimed that

"Q.T.: On the quiet. The phrase has been traced back to a British farce My Husband's Secret (1874) by Walter Devereux Whitty, and 'on the quiet' to an 1847 sporting magazine. While the source is unknown, one theory has it that the letters stand for the Latin phrase quaedam tacenda for 'things about which to keep quiet.' Students studying classical literature at Oxford would occasionally come across obscene or improper phrases, which the teacher would pass over by stating 'here there are quaedam tacenda.' It is possible that students would note these passages as 'QT,' inspiring the phrase 'on the QT.' "

It appears that the above 2016 book lifted the information without attribution from this 2011-2013 Stack Exchange thread:[2]

One other early use of Quaedam Tacenda was in The Monthly Religious Magazine and Theological Review, Volume 18 (1857) by Frederic Dan Huntington, ‎Edmund Hamilton Sears, ‎Rufus Ellis [3] --Guy Macon (talk) 14:38, 22 March 2018 (UTC)