I. ˈkwēn noun
( -s )
Etymology: Middle English quen, quene, from Old English cwēn woman, wife, queen; akin to Old Saxon quān wife, Old Norse kvæn, kvān, Gothic qens wife, Old Irish ben woman, Greek gynē, Armenian kin, Sanskrit jani
1.
a. : the wife or widow of a king
b. : the wife or widow of a chief of a tribe (as of Indians)
2.
a. : a woman who is the sovereign of a kingdom : a female monarch
b. : chieftainess
queen of the Iroquois
gypsy queen
3.
a. : a woman eminent in rank, power, or attractions
a queen in society
movie queen
b. : a goddess or a thing personified as female and having supremacy in a specified realm
Venus, queen of love
Paris, queen of cities
a new liner to join the ocean queens
c. : a strikingly attractive girl or woman ; especially : the winner of a beauty contest
4. : the most privileged piece in a set of chessmen having the power to move as either a rook or a bishop
5. : a playing card marked with a stylized figure of a queen and usually the initial letter Q
6. : the fertile fully developed female of social bees, ants, and termites whose function in the colony is to lay eggs — compare soldier , worker ; see honeybee illustration
7. : a mature female cat ; specifically : one kept for breeding
8. slang : homosexual
•
- to the queen's taste
II. verb
( -ed/-ing/-s )
intransitive verb
1. : to act like a queen : behave in a queenly manner : put on airs
queens in and makes with a production — Julian Halevy
— usually used with formulary it
another woman queening it in the new penthouse — Helen Howe
2. : to reign as queen
3. : to become a queen in chess
transitive verb
1. : to promote (a pawn) to a queen in chess
2. : to reign over as queen
3. : to make a queen of
to queen a woman
4. : to provide a queen for (as a hive of bees)
III.
Usage: usually capitalized
Etymology: queen (I)
— a communications code word for the letter q
IV.
variant of quean