queen

queen (kw

a. The wife or widow of a king.

b. A woman sovereign.

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

a. The most powerful chess piece, able to move in any direction over any number of empty squares in a straight line.

b. 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.

Idiom:

queen it

To act like a queen; domineer: queens it over the whole family.

[Middle English quene, from Old English cwn; see g^wen- 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 cwn, pronounced (kw

n), "queen, wife of a king," and comes from Germanic *kwn-iz, "woman, wife, queen." Quean comes from Old English cwene, pronounced (kw

), "woman, female, female serf"; from the eleventh century on it was also used to mean "prostitute." The Germanic source of cwene is *kwen-n-, "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 *g^wen-, "woman," which appears in at least two other English words borrowed from elsewhere in the Indo-European family. One is gynecology, from Greek gun, "woman." Another, less obvious, one is banshee, "woman of the fairies," the wailing female spirit attendant on a death, from Old Irish ben, "woman."

queen

Noun

1. a female sovereign who is the official ruler or head of state

2. the wife of a king

3. a woman, thing, or place considered the best or most important of her or its kind: the rose is considered the queen of garden flowers

4. Slang an effeminate male homosexual

5. the only fertile female in a colony of bees, wasps, or ants

6. a playing card with a picture of a queen on it

7. a chessman, able to move in a straight line in any direction

Verb

1. Chess to promote (a pawn) to a queen when it reaches the eighth rank

2. queen it Informal to behave in an overbearing manner: she is more beautiful than ever and still queening it over everybody [Old English cwēn]

queenly adj

ThesaurusLegend: Synonyms Related Words Antonyms

Noun	1.	queen - the only fertile female in a colony of social insects such as bees and ants and termites; its function is to lay eggs insect - small air-breathing arthropod queen bee - fertile egg-laying female bee
	2.	queen - a female sovereign ruler female monarch, queen regnant royal family, royal house, royal line, royalty - royal persons collectively; "the wedding was attended by royalty" female aristocrat - a woman who is an aristocrat Queen of England - the sovereign ruler of England king, male monarch, Rex - a male sovereign; ruler of a kingdom
	3.	queen - the wife or widow of a king royal family, royal house, royal line, royalty - royal persons collectively; "the wedding was attended by royalty" female aristocrat - a woman who is an aristocrat queen consort - the wife of a reigning king queen dowager - the widow of a king queen regent - a queen who serves as ruler when the king cannot
	4.	queen - something personified as a woman who is considered the best or most important of her kind; "Paris is the queen of cities"; "the queen of ocean liners" personification - a person who represents an abstract quality; "she is the personification of optimism"
	5.	queen - a competitor who holds a preeminent position world-beater, king challenger, competitor, contender, rival, competition - the contestant you hope to defeat; "he had respect for his rivals"; "he wanted to know what the competition was doing"
	6.	queen - offensive term for an openly homosexual man fag, faggot, fagot, poof, poove, pouf, queer, nance, fairy, pansy derogation, disparagement, depreciation - a communication that belittles somebody or something gay man, shirtlifter - a homosexual man
	7.	queen - one of four face cards in a deck bearing a picture of a queen court card, face card, picture card - one of the twelve cards in a deck bearing a picture of a face deck of cards, pack of cards, deck - a pack of 52 playing cards
	8.	queen - (chess) the most powerful piece chess game, chess - a board game for two players who move their 16 pieces according to specific rules; the object is to checkmate the opponent's king chess piece, chessman - any of 16 white and 16 black pieces used in playing the game of chess
	9.	queen - an especially large mole rat and the only member of a colony of naked mole rats to bear offspring which are sired by only a few males queen mole rat naked mole rat - fetal-looking colonial rodent of East Africa; neither mole nor rat; they feed on tubers and have a social structure similar to that of honeybees and termites
	10.	queen - female cat tabby domestic cat, Felis catus, Felis domesticus, house cat - any domesticated member of the genus Felis
Verb	1.	queen - promote to a queen, as of a pawn in chess promote - change a pawn for a better piece by advancing it to the eighth row, or change a checker piece for a more valuable piece by moving it to the row closest to your opponent
	2.	queen - become a queen; "her pawn queened" chess game, chess - a board game for two players who move their 16 pieces according to specific rules; the object is to checkmate the opponent's king promote - be changed for a superior chess or checker piece