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queen - 8 dictionary results
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queen

  [kween]
Use queen in a Sentence
–noun
1. a female sovereign or monarch.
2. the wife or consort of a king.
3. a woman, or something personified as a woman, that is foremost or preeminent in any respect: a movie queen; a beauty queen; Athens, the queen of the Aegean.
4. Slang: Disparaging and Offensive.
a. a male homosexual, esp. one who is flamboyantly campy.
b. drag queen.
5. a playing card bearing a picture of a queen.
6. Chess. the most powerful piece of either color, moved across any number of empty squares in any direction.
7. Entomology. a fertile female ant, bee, termite, or wasp.
8. a word formerly used in communications to represent the letter Q.
–verb (used without object)
9. to reign as queen.
10. to behave in an imperious or pretentious manner (usually fol. by it).
11. Chess. to become promoted to a queen.
Origin:
bef. 900; ME quene, quen, OE cwēn woman, queen; c. OS quān, ON kvān, Goth qēns < Gmc *kwēni-; akin to OIr ben, Gk gyn woman, Russ zhená, Skt jani wife

Related forms:
queenless, adjective
queenlike, adjective

Queen

  [kween]
–noun
Ellery, joint pen name of Manfred Bennington Lee and Frederic Dannay.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
Cite This Source Link To queen
queen   (kwēn)   
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."
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Queen

Queen\, n. [OE. quen, quene, queen, quean, AS. cw[=e]n wife, queen, woman; akin to OS. qu[=a]n wife, woman, Icel. kv[=a]n wife, queen, Goth. q[=e]ns. [root]221. See Quean.]

1. The wife of a king.

2. A woman who is the sovereign of a kingdom; a female monarch; as, Elizabeth, queen of England; Mary, queen of Scots.

In faith, and by the heaven's quene. --Chaucer.

3. A woman eminent in power or attractions; the highest of her kind; as, a queen in society; -- also used figuratively of cities, countries, etc. " This queen of cities." " Albion, queen of isles." --Cowper.

4. The fertile, or fully developed, female of social bees, ants, and termites.

5. (Chess) The most powerful, and except the king the most important, piece in a set of chessmen.

6. A playing card bearing the picture of a queen; as, the queen of spades.

Queen apple. [Cf. OE. quyne aple quince apple.] A kind of apple; a queening. "Queen apples and red cherries." --Spenser.

Queen bee (Zo["o]l.), a female bee, especially the female of the honeybee. See Honeybee.

Queen conch (Zo["o]l.), a very large West Indian cameo conch (Cassis cameo). It is much used for making cameos.

Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king. --Blackstone.

Queen dowager, the widow of a king.

Queen gold, formerly a revenue of the queen consort of England, arising from gifts, fines, etc.

Queen mother, a queen dowager who is also mother of the reigning king or queen.

Queen of May. See May queen, under May.

Queen of the meadow (Bot.), a European herbaceous plant (Spir[ae]a Ulmaria). See Meadowsweet.

Queen of the prairie (Bot.), an American herb (Spir[ae]a lobata) with ample clusters of pale pink flowers.

Queen pigeon (Zo["o]l.), any one of several species of very large and handsome crested ground pigeons of the genus Goura, native of New Guinea and the adjacent islands. They are mostly pale blue, or ash-blue, marked with white, and have a large occipital crest of spatulate feathers. Called also crowned pigeon, goura, and Victoria pigeon.

Queen regent, or Queen regnant, a queen reigning in her own right.

Queen's Bench. See King's Bench.

Queen's counsel, Queen's evidence. See King's counsel, King's evidence, under King.

Queen's delight (Bot.), an American plant (Stillinqia sylvatica) of the Spurge family, having an herbaceous stem and a perennial woody root.

Queen's metal (Metal.), an alloy somewhat resembling pewter or britannia, and consisting essentially of tin with a slight admixture of antimony, bismuth, and lead or copper.

Queen's pigeon. (Zo["o]l.) Same as Queen pigeon, above.

Queen's ware, glazed English earthenware of a cream color.

Queen's yellow (Old Chem.), a heavy yellow powder consisting of a basic mercuric sulphate; -- formerly called turpetum minerale, or Turbith's mineral.

Queen

Queen\, v. i. To act the part of a queen. --Shak.

Queen

Queen\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Queened; p. pr. & vb. n. Queening.] (Chess.) To make a queen (or other piece, at the player's discretion) of by moving it to the eighth row; as, to queen a pawn.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
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Language Translation for : queen
Spanish: reina,
German: die Königin,
Japanese: 女王
More Translations »

queen 
O.E. cwen "queen, female ruler of a state, woman, wife," from P.Gmc. *kwoeniz, ablaut variant of *kwenon (source of quean), from PIE *gwen- "woman, wife" supposedly originally "honored woman" (cf. Greek gyné "a woman, a wife;" Gaelic bean "woman;" Skt. janis "a woman," gná "wife of a god, a goddess;" Avestan jainish "wife;" Armenian kin "woman;" O.C.S. zena, O.Pruss. genna "woman;" Goth. qino "a woman, wife; qéns "a queen"). English seems unique in I.E. in having a word for "queen" that is not a fem. derivative of the one for "king." The original sense seems to have been "wife," specialized by O.E. to "wife of a king." Used of chess piece from 1440, of playing card from 1575. Of bees from 1609 (until late 17c., they generally were thought to be kings; cf. "Henry V," I.ii). Meaning "male homosexual" (especially a feminine and ostentatious one) first recorded 1924; probably an alteration of quean in this sense. Queens, the New York borough, was named for Catherine of Braganza, queen of English King Charles II. Queen Anne first used 1878 for "style characteristic of the time of Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland," who reigned 1702-14.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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Queen

No explicit mention of queens is made till we read of the "queen of Sheba." The wives of the kings of Israel are not so designated. In Ps. 45:9, the Hebrew for "queen" is not _malkah_, one actually ruling like the Queen of Sheba, but _shegal_, which simply means the king's wife. In 1 Kings 11:19, Pharaoh's wife is called "the queen," but the Hebrew word so rendered (g'birah) is simply a title of honour, denoting a royal lady, used sometimes for "queen-mother" (1 Kings 15:13; 2 Chron. 15:16). In Cant. 6:8, 9, the king's wives are styled "queens" (Heb. melakhoth). In the New Testament we read of the "queen of the south", i.e., Southern Arabia, Sheba (Matt. 12:42; Luke 11:31) and the "queen of the Ethiopians" (Acts 8:27), Candace.

Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary
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