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[kween] /kwin/

noun
1.
Ellery, joint pen name of and .
/kwiːn/
noun
1.
a female sovereign who is the official ruler or head of state
2.
the wife or widow of a king
3.
a woman or a thing personified as a woman considered the best or most important of her kind: a beauty queen, the queen of ocean liners
4.
(slang) an effeminate male homosexual
5.

6.
an adult female cat
7.
one of four playing cards in a pack, one for each suit, bearing the picture of a queen
8.
a chess piece, theoretically the most powerful piece, able to move in a straight line in any direction or diagonally, over any number of squares
verb
9.
(chess) to promote (a pawn) to a queen when it reaches the eighth rank
10.
(transitive) to crown as queen
11.
(intransitive) (informal) (of a gay man) to flaunt one’s homosexuality
12.
(intransitive) to reign as queen
13.
(often foll by over) (informal) queen it, to behave in an overbearing manner
/kwiːn/
noun
1.
Ellery (ˈɛlərɪ). pseudonym of Frederic Dannay (1905–82) and Manfred B. Lee (1905–71), US co-authors of detective novels featuring a sleuth also called Ellery Queen
n.

Old English cwen “queen, female ruler of a state, woman, wife,” from Proto-Germanic *kwoeniz (cf. 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” (cf. 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, e.g. 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, e.g. 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; cf. “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.

noun

verb

(also queen it) To behave in a refined and haughty way (1611+)

Related Terms

closet queen, drag queen, main queen, size queen, tearoom queen, toe-jam queen

[homosexual sense probably a late 1800s alteration of quean, ”harlot, prostitute,” influenced by connotations of queen, ”aged, dignified, tawdry, and overadorned”]

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.