queen
pronunciation
How to pronounce queen in British English:
UK [kwiːn]
How to pronounce queen in American English:
US [kwiːn]
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- Noun:
- the only fertile female in a colony of social insects such as bees and ants and termites; its function is to lay eggs
- a female sovereign ruler
- the wife or widow of a king
- something personified as a woman who is considered the best or most important of her kind
- a competitor who holds a preeminent position
- offensive terms for an openly homosexual man
- one of four face cards in a deck bearing a picture of a queen
- (chess) the most powerful piece
- especially large and only member of a colony of naked mole rats to bear offspring sired by only a few males
- female cat
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- Verb:
- promote to a queen, as of a pawn in chess
- become a queen
Word Origin
- queen
- queen: [OE] Queen goes back ultimately to prehistoric Indo-European *gwen- ‘woman’, source also of Greek guné ‘woman’ (from which English gets gynaecology), Persian zan ‘woman’ (from which English gets zenana ‘harem’), Swedish kvinna ‘woman’, and the now obsolete English quean ‘woman’. In its very earliest use in Old English queen (or cwēn, as it then was) was used for a ‘wife’, but not just any wife: it denoted the wife of a man of particular distinction, and usually a king. It was not long before it became institutionalized as ‘king’s wife’, and hence ‘woman ruling in her own right’.=> gynaecology, quean, zenana
- queen (n.)
- Old English cwen "queen, female ruler of a state, woman, wife," from Proto-Germanic *kwoeniz (cognates: Old Saxon quan "wife," Old Norse kvaen, Gothic quens), ablaut variant of *kwenon (source of quean), from PIE *gwen- "woman, wife" supposedly originally "honored woman" (cognates: Greek gyné "a woman, a wife;" Gaelic bean "woman;" Sanskrit janis "a woman," gná "wife of a god, a goddess;" Avestan jainish "wife;" Armenian kin "woman;" Old Church Slavonic zena, Old Prussian genna "woman;" Gothic qino "a woman, wife; qéns "a queen"). The original sense seems to have been "wife," specialized by Old English to "wife of a king." In Old Norse, still mostly of a wife generally, as in kvan-fang "marriage, taking of a wife," kvanlauss "unmarried, widowed," kvan-riki "the domineering of a wife." English is one of the few Indo-European languages to have a word for "queen" that is not a feminine derivative of a word for "king." The others are Scandinavian: Old Norse drottning, Danish dronning, Swedish drottning "queen," in Old Norse also "mistress," but these also are held to be ultimately from male words, such as Old Norse drottinn "master." Used of chess piece from mid-15c. (as a verb in chess, in reference to a pawn that has reached the last rank, from 1789), of playing card from 1570s. Of bees from c. 1600 (until late 17c., they generally were thought to be kings; as in "Henry V," I.ii); queen bee in a figurative sense is from 1807. Meaning "male homosexual" (especially a feminine and ostentatious one) first certainly recorded 1924; probably here an alteration of quean, which is earlier in this sense. Queen Anne first used 1878 for "style characteristic of the time of Queen Anne of Great Britain and Ireland," who reigned 1702-14. Cincinnati, Ohio, has been the Queen City (of the West) since 1835.
Antonym
Example
- 1. The queen herself has frequently visited ulster .
- 2. The queen smiled and walked past .
- 3. Blame david bowie if you like . Or queen .
- 4. Places like queen elizabeth hospital show how innovations can bubble up through the nhs .
- 5. I take her rook with my queen .