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queen it

 - 5 dictionary results

queen

  [kween]
Use queen it 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
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
Cite This Source Link To queen it
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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Slang Dictionary
queen

  1. n.
    a homosexual male. : Tom is getting to be such a queen.
Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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Word Origin & History

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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Idioms & Phrases

queen it

Act like a queen, domineer, as in She queened it over the family, treating her siblings like servants. This female counterpart of lord it over was used by Shakespeare in The Winter's Tale (4:4). [c. 1600]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
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