Dictionary
Thesaurus
Reference
Translate
Web
Queens
5 dictionary results for: Queens
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This
Queens       [kweenz] Pronunciation Key
–noun
a borough of E New York City, on Long Island. 1,891,325; 113.1 sq. mi. (295 sq. km).
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
CITE THIS SOURCE|PRINT
American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This
queen       (kwēn)  Pronunciation Key 
n.  
    1. The wife or widow of a king.
    2. A woman sovereign.
    3. The most powerful chess piece, able to move in any direction over any number of empty squares in a straight line.
    4. A playing card bearing the figure of a queen, ranking above the jack and below the king.
  2. Something having eminence or supremacy in a given domain and personified as a woman: Paris is regarded as the queen of cities.
  3. Abbr. Q Games
    1. The most powerful chess piece, able to move in any direction over any number of empty squares in a straight line.
    2. A playing card bearing the figure of a queen, ranking above the jack and below the king.
  4. The fertile, fully developed female in a colony of social bees, ants, or termites.
  5. A mature female cat, especially one kept for breeding purposes.
  6. Offensive Slang Used as a disparaging term for a homosexual man.

v.   queened, queen·ing, queens

v.   tr.
  1. To make (a woman) a queen.
  2. Games To raise (a pawn) to queen in chess.

v.   intr. Games
To become a queen in chess.


[Middle English quene, from Old English cwēn; see gwen- in Indo-European roots.]

Word History: Queen and quean sound alike, are spelled almost identically, and both refer to women, but of wildly different kinds. Queen comes from Old English cwēn, pronounced (kwān), "queen, wife of a king," and comes from Germanic *kwēn-iz, "woman, wife, queen." Quean comes from Old English cwene, pronounced (kwěn'ə), "woman, female, female serf"; from the eleventh century on it was also used to mean "prostitute." The Germanic source of cwene is *kwen-ōn-, "woman, wife." Once established, the pejorative sense of quean drove out its neutral senses and especially in the 16th and 17th centuries it was used almost solely to refer to prostitutes. Around the same time, in many English dialects the pronunciation of queen and quean became identical, leading to the obsolescence of the latter term except in some regions. · The Germanic root for both words, *kwen-, "woman," comes by Grimm's Law from the Indo-European root *gwen-, "woman," which appears in at least two other English words borrowed from elsewhere in the Indo-European family. One is gynecology, from Greek gunē, "woman." Another, less obvious, one is banshee, "woman of the fairies," the wailing female spirit attendant on a death, from Old Irish ben, "woman."

(Download Now or Buy the Book)
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
CITE THIS SOURCE|PRINT
American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This
Queens       (kwēnz)  Pronunciation Key 
A borough of New York City in southeast New York on western Long Island. It was first settled by the Dutch in 1635 and became part of greater New York in 1898. Population: 2,240,000.

(Download Now or Buy the Book)
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
CITE THIS SOURCE|PRINT
WordNet - Cite This Source - Share This
queens

noun
a borough of New York City 

WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.
CITE THIS SOURCE|PRINT
U.S. Gazetteer - Cite This Source - Share This

Queens Village, NY Zip code(s): 11427, 11428, 11429

Queens County, NY (county, FIPS 81) Location: 40.65640 N, 73.83953 W
Population (1990): 1951598 (752690 housing units)
Area: 283.3 sq km (land), 176.0 sq km (water)

Tyler Run-Queens Gate, PA (CDP, FIPS 78116) Location: 39.93395 N, 76.69690 W
Population (1990): 2739 (1311 housing units)
Area: 4.0 sq km (land), 0.0 sq km (water)

U.S. Gazetteer, U.S. Census Bureau
CITE THIS SOURCE|PRINT
Share This:Share This: digg.comShare This: ma.gnolia.comShare This: www.stumbleupon.comShare This: del.icio.usShare This: FacebookShare This: favorites.live.comShare This: www.technorati.comShare This: furl.netShare This: myweb2.search.yahoo.comShare This: www.google.com