queer

Attested since about 1510, from Scots, perhaps from Middle Low German (Brunswick dialect) queer (“oblique, off-center”) (also compare with German quer (“diagonally”)), from Proto-Germanic *þwerhaz, from Proto-Indo-European *terkʷ- (“to turn, twist, wind”). Compare Latin torqueo. Related to thwart.

• (General American) enPR: kwîr, IPA^(key): /kwɪɹ/
• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: kwîr, IPA^(key): /kwɪə/

• Audio (US)

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• Audio

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• Rhymes: -ɪə(ɹ)

queer (comparative queerer, superlative queerest)

1. (dated) Weird, odd or different; whimsical. [from 16th c.]
   • (Can we find and add a quotation of Washington Irving to this entry?)
   • 1865, Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

     “I wish I hadn’t cried so much!” said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. “I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That will be a queer thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer to-day.”

   • 1877, Ulysses S. Grant, page 252, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant: November 1, 1876–September 30, 1878

     One thing has struck me as a bit queer. During my two terms of office the whole Democratic press, and the morbidly honest and 'reformatory' portion of the Republican press, thought it horrible to keep U.S. troops stationed in the Southern States, and when they were called upon to protect the lives of negroes–as much citizens under the Constitution as if their skins were white–the country was scarcely large enough to hold the sound of indignation belched forth by them for some years. Now, however, there is no hesitation about exhausting the whole power of the government to suppress a strike on the slightest intimation that danger threatens.

   • 1885, David Dixon Porter, page 274, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War

     It looked queer to me to see boxes labeled "His Excellency, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America." The packages so labeled contained Bass ale or Cognac brandy, which cost "His Excellency" less than we Yankees had to pay for it. Think of the President drinking imported liquors while his soldiers were living on pop-corn and water!

   • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 5, in Mr. Pratt's Patients:

     Of all the queer collections of humans outside of a crazy asylum, it seemed to me this sanitarium was the cup winner. […] When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose.

   • 1927, J. B. S. Haldane, “Possible Worlds” in Possible Worlds and Other Papers, London: Chatto & Windus,^,

     Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

2. (Britain, informal, dated) Slightly unwell (mainly in to feel queer). [from 18th c.]
   • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 5, in Mr. Pratt's Patients:

     Of all the queer collections of humans outside of a crazy asylum, it seemed to me this sanitarium was the cup winner. … When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose.

3. (colloquial, sometimes derogatory) Homosexual. [from 20th c.]
4. (colloquial, sometimes derogatory) Not heterosexual: homosexual, bisexual, asexual, etc.
5. (broadly) Pertaining to sexual behaviour or identity which does not conform to conventional heterosexual norms, assumptions etc. [from 20th c.]
   • 1999, Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, Routledge 2002, Preface to 1999 edition:

     If gender is no longer to be understood as consolidated through normative sexuality, then is there a crisis of gender that is specific to queer contexts?

• The use of queer to mean "non-heterosexual" was formerly pejorative, and some still consider it pejorative. Others have reclaimed the term, however, as a neutral descriptor. The pejorative applied mainly to those assigned male at birth who were perceived as homosexual or effeminate; the reclaimed term is also used of those assigned female at birth.[1] (Compare genderqueer, a positive umbrella term for noncisgender and non-binary — nonmale, nonfemale — gender identities.)
• In particular, queer has often been used by people who reject mainstream gay values and culture as overly conservative and assimilationist. See Wikipedia for more.

• (weird, odd or different): See Thesaurus:strange
• (unwell): See Thesaurus:diseased
• (homosexual): See Thesaurus:homosexual
• (unconventional sexual behavior):

queer (plural queers)

1. (colloquial, sometimes derogatory) A person who is or appears homosexual, or who has homosexual qualities.
   • 1991, Stephen Fry, The Liar, pp. 11–12:

     ‘You're a fucking queer and you're turning the whole House into fucking queers.’
     ‘Queer am I?’ said Adrian. ‘They called Oscar Wilde a queer, they called Michelangelo a queer, they called Tchaikovsky a —’
     ‘And they were queers,’ said Sargent, another prefect.
     ‘Well, yes, there is that,’ conceded Adrian, ‘my argument rather falls down there I grant you, but what I say is this, my door is always open to you, R.B.-J., and to you as well, Sargent, naturally, and if either of you has any problems coming to terms with your sexuality you mustn't hesitate to visit me and talk about it.’
     ‘Oh for God's sake —’

2. (colloquial, sometimes derogatory) A person of any non-heterosexual sexuality or sexual identity.
3. (definite, with "the", informal, archaic) Counterfeit money.
   • 1913, Rex Stout, Her Forbidden Knight, 1997 Carroll & Graf edition, →ISBN, page 133:

     You're shoving the queer.

• See the notes on the adjective (above) for more on the meaning of the term.
• Regarding the use of the term as a noun, compare the usage notes about gay.

• (homosexual person): See Thesaurus:homosexual person or Thesaurus:male homosexual
• (counterfeit money): funny money, snide

• LGBTQ, QUILTBAG

• queerdo
• shove the queer

queer (third-person singular simple present queers, present participle queering, simple past and past participle queered)

1. (transitive) To render an endeavor or agreement ineffective or null.
   • 1955, Rex Stout, "When a Man Murders...", in Three Witnesses, October 1994 Bantam edition, →ISBN, page 78:

     I was a lot more apt to queer it than help it.

2. (Britain, dialectal, dated) To puzzle.
   • 1887, G. W. Appelton, A Terrible Legacy: A Tale of the South Downs, London: Ward and Downey, Chapter II, page 12, :

     "But lor-a-mussy, Jacob, how could a woman get away from here with all her boxes in the middle of the night?"

     "That's what queered me," and Spink slowly shook his head, "and queered a good many; for of course it got newsed about […] "

   • 1894, Ivan Dexter, Talmud: A Strange Narrative of Central Australia, published in serial form in Port Adelaide News and Lefevre's Peninsula Advertiser (SA), Chapter III, :

     "Where do you come from?" Stanley queered.

3. (slang, dated) To ridicule; to banter; to rally.
4. (slang, dated) To spoil the effect or success of, as by ridicule; to throw a wet blanket on; to spoil.
   • 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, Book Two, Chapter IV, pages 270-271, :

     "Food is what queered the party. We ordered a big supper to be sent up to the room about two o'clock. Alec didn't give the waiter a tip, so I guess the little bastard snitched."

   • 1926, D. H. Lawrence, "Glad Ghosts" in The Complete Short Stories, Penguin, 1977, Vol. 3, page 678:

     Well, then I got buried—shell dropped, and the dug-out caved in—and that queered me. They sent me home.

5. (social sciences) To reevaluate or reinterpret (a work) with an eye to sexual orientation and/or to gender, as by applying queer theory.
   • 2003, Marcella Althaus-Reid, The Queer God, page 9:

     If I go, for instance, to the history of the church in Latin America, and decide to queer the history of the Jesuitic Missions, I may find that, in many ways, the missions were more sexual than Christian.

   • 2006, Carla Freccero, Queer/Early/Modern (page 80)

     Jonathan Goldberg further explores the implications of queering history in his essay in the same volume.

• invalidate

queer (comparative more queer, superlative most queer)

1. Queerly.

queer

1. Alternative form of quer

queer

1. Alternative form of quer

Borrowed from English queer.

• IPA^(key): /kviːɐ̯/

queer (not comparable)

1. (colloquial) queer

• queer in Duden online