queer

• qwer (Bermuda)

Attested since about 1510, at first in Scots. Usually taken to be from Middle Low German (Brunswick dialect) queer (“oblique, off-center”) or the related German quer (“diagonal”),^[1][2][3] from Old Saxon thwerh, from Proto-West Germanic *þwerh, from Proto-Germanic *þwerhaz, from Proto-Indo-European *terkʷ- (“to turn, twist, wind”); compare Latin torqueō, and see more at thwart. The OED argues against this due to the semantic differences and the date at which the word appears in Scots.^[1][3]

Began to be used to describe gay people in the late 1800s, see usage notes for more.

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

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪə(ɹ)

queer (comparative queerer, superlative queerest)

1. (dated outside Ireland, Scotland and England) Weird, odd, or different; whimsical. [from 16th c.]
   • 1824, Geoffrey Crayon [pseudonym; Washington Irving], Tales of a Traveller, (please specify |part=1 to 4), Philadelphia, Pa.: H[enry] C[harles] Carey & I[saac] Lea, […], →OCLC:

     An old long-faced, long-bodied servant, gave a queer look

   • 1865 November (indicated as 1866), Lewis Carroll [pseudonym; Charles Lutwidge Dodgson], “The Pool of Tears”, in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, London: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, pages 23–24:

     “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, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant: November 1, 1876-September 30, 1878‎^[6], page 252:

     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, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War‎^[7], page 274:

     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[rosby] Lincoln, chapter V, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:

     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.

   • 1920, H. P. Lovecraft, w:The Picture in the House:

     “’Tis a queer book - here, leave me git on my spectacles - ” The old man fumbled among his rags, producing a pair of dirty and amazingly antique glasses (...)

   • 1927, J. B. S. Haldane, “Possible Worlds” in Possible Worlds and Other Papers, London: Chatto & Windus,^{[8], [9]}

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

   • 1952, E. B. White, Charlotte's Web, page 3:

     A queer look came over John Arable's face. He seemed almost ready to cry himself.

   • 1965, “Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation”, Tom Paxton (lyrics), Tom Paxton (music):

     Though it may seem very queer,
     we've got no jobs to give you here,
     so we are sending you to Vietnam.

2. (British, informal, dated) Slightly unwell (mainly in "to feel queer"). [from 18th c.]
   • 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter V, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:

     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.

   • 1951, C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia:

     "Well, I'm—I'm jiggered," said Peter, and his voice also sounded queer.

   • 1954, Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot‎^[10], →ISBN, page 3:

     VLADIMIR: Hope deferred maketh the something sick, who said that? / ESTRAGON: Why don't you help me? / VLADIMIR: Sometimes I feel it coming all the same. Then I go all queer.

3. (British, slang) Drunk.
4. (colloquial, sometimes derogatory) Homosexual. [from 19th c.]
5. (colloquial, sometimes derogatory) Non-heterosexual or non-cisgender: homosexual, bisexual, asexual, transgender, etc.
6. (broadly) Pertaining to sexual or gender behaviour or identity which does not conform to conventional heterosexual or cisgender norms, assumptions etc. [from 20th c.]

   the queer community

   • 1999, Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, Routledge, published 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?

   • 2022, Marisol Cortez, “Ambivalent Anality: Revisiting the Queer Ecology of the "Jackass Moment"”, in Media+Environment:

     Historically, this has meant that queer sexuality—defined here not literally or only as same-gender desire but as "the sex of others," meaning any sexuality outside the bounds of the reproductive, white, and genitally oriented—is often positioned against and even as toxic to "nature".

• Queer, in the sense of "gay" or "non-heterosexual", has gone in and out of use as a pejorative and as a self-identifier a number of times:^[4] it began to be used to describe gay people in the late 1800s (e.g. in an 1894 letter by John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry),^[5][6] and became more widespread in the US and became used as a self-identifier by American gay men by the 1910s, continuing into the 1950s, though by the 1940s younger ones considered it pejorative and preferred gay, which had been in use since the 1930s, and had come by the 1950s to encompass the whole LGBT community.^[4][7] Queer began to be reclaimed as a neutral or positive descriptor by the 1980s,^[8] at first most prominently by those who wanted to distinguish themselves from gay-identified people they felt had become too conservative and assimilationist.^[9] Some other people oppose the term as being still pejorative, or too radical, too informal, or too technical.^[10][11] The pejorative applied mainly to those assigned male at birth who were perceived as homosexual or effeminate; the reclaimed term is used by people of any sex or gender.^[12] Sometimes, the word refers only to nonheterosexual people and sexuality (and thus, speakers may contrast e.g. "queer trans women" with "straight trans women"),^[13] while at other times the word includes noncisgender people and is analogous to LGBT.^[14][15] (Compare genderqueer.)
  • See also Queer on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• The word queer is still in regular, everyday use in Ireland, England and Scotland in its original meaning of "strange", "weird" or "bad". Elsewhere, however, this usage has almost completely disappeared and is now likely to be misunderstood by those unaware of it. If used in a modern setting, it may even be seen as callous to LGBTQIA+ people.

• (weird, odd or different): See Thesaurus:strange
• (unwell): See Thesaurus:diseased
• (homosexual): See Thesaurus:homosexual
• (outside traditional gender roles): genderfluid, non-binary, intergender
• (unconventional sexual behavior):

• → German: queer, Queer
• → Russian: квир (kvir)
• → Swedish: queer

queer (plural queers)

1. (colloquial, sometimes derogatory) A person who is or appears homosexual, or who has homosexual qualities.
   • 1894 November 1, John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, “[Letter from Queensbury to Alfred Montgomery, 1 Nov 1894, in the aftermath of the trial of Oscar Wilde]”, in Michael S. Foldy, editor, The Trials of Oscar Wilde: Deviance, Morality, and Late-Victorian Society, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, published 1997, page 22:

     Now that the first flush of this catastrophe and grief is passed, I write to tell you that it is a judgement on the whole lot of you. Montgomerys, The Snob Queers like [the Earl of] Rosebery & certainly Christian hypocrite [William Ewart] Gladstone [...]

   • 1914 November, Eugene Fisher, “Transmittal to the Sacramento Bee [a.k.a Shakespeare Transmittal]”, in Sharon R. Ullman, editor, Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, published 1998, →ISBN, page 64:

     [...] fourteen young men were invited [...] with the premise that they would have the opportunity of meeting some of the prominent 'queers,' [...] and the further attraction that some 'chickens' as the new recruits in the vice are called, would be available.

   • 1940 January-June, Allen Bernstein, “What to do about it: Queers”, in Millions of Queers (Our Homo America), [Unpublished MS of the United States National Library of Medicine], →OCLC, page 132:

     It is the queers themselves whose answers to "What to do about it [homosexuality]" are most important. They, rather than the normals, cops, parents, or doctors are the persons most vitally concerned.

   • 1959 May, David McReynolds, “McReynolds Reply to [Seymour] Krim”, in Mattachine Review, volume V, number 5, Los Angeles: Mattachine Society, →ISSN, page 11, column 2:

     Any blow against the queer is really a blow struck against a part of ourselves which we cannot accept or understand. I think in every case it would be correct to say that someone with a strong hostility toward homosexuals has a latent homosexual drive equal to the hostility.

   • 1968, Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant, London: Cape, →OCLC, page 207:

     If you asked the man in the modern street for his opinion of homosexuality, he would probably reply, 'I've nothing against queers myself but I wouldn't like one of them to marry my father.'

   • 1990 June, Queers Read This, Published Anonymously by Queers [Distributed at New York Pride, 1990], →OCLC, page 2, column 3:

     Queers are under siege.
     Queers are being attacked on all front and I'm afraid it's ok with us.
     In 1969, Queers were attacked. It wasn't ok. Queers fought back, took the streets. SHOUTED.

   • 2013 February 5, “Football coach suspended for Michelle Obama insult”, in USA Today‎^[11], →ISSN:

     He also voiced his dislike for gays, stating: 'I don't believe in queers. I don't like queers. I don't hate them as a person, but what they do is wrong and an abomination against God.'

2. (colloquial, sometimes derogatory) A person of any non-heterosexual sexuality or sexual identity.
3. (colloquial, sometimes derogatory) A person of any genderqueer identity.
   • 2014, Inga Muscio, Autobiography of a Blue-eyed Devil:

     Gentrification often starts with the artists, revolutionaries, freaks, transfolks, and queers (what I would call my people) moving into poor neighborhoods inhabited by people of color.

4. (definite, with "the", informal, archaic) Counterfeit money.

   Synonyms: funny money, snide

   • 1913, Rex Stout, Her Forbidden Knight, Carroll & Graf, published 1997, →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

• LGBTQ, QUILTBAG

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

1. (transitive, dated) 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.

   Synonym: invalidate

2. (UK, dialect, dated) To puzzle.^[16]
   • 1887, G. W. Appelton, chapter II, in A Terrible Legacy: A Tale of the South Downs‎^[12], London: Ward and Downey, 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 V, [13]:

     "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^[14], 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, volume 3, Penguin, published 1977, 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.

   Synonym: queerify

   • 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.

   • 2013, Mark Davidson, Deborah Martin, chapter 8, in Urban Politics: Critical Approaches, SAGE, →ISBN:

     We might say that there has been a ‘queering’ of urban studies insofar as the metropolitan lives, subcultures and social movements of gays and lesbians are now seen as valid objects of study.

6. (slang, LGBTQ, neologism) To make a work more appealing or attractive to LGBT people, such as by not having strict genders for playable characters.

queer (not generally comparable, comparative more queer, superlative most queer)

1. Queerly.
2. (Ireland) Very, extremely.^[17]

   Synonyms: mighty, wicked

   Twas a queer bachram in the pub that night!

   • 1939, James Joyce, Finnegans Wake:

     Ah, but she was the queer old skeowsha anyhow, Anna Livia, trinkettoes!”

   • 1988, Billy Roche, A Handful of Stars, act I, pages 6, 14:

     Page 6: Tony: Yeah, he's a queer smily fecker, ain't he?
     Page 14: Tony: I'll tell yeh one thing Conway he's trainin' queer hard for it!

• “queer”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• queer in Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary, edited by The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, Holly Yanacek, 2018.
• “queer”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

Borrowed from English queer.

• IPA^(key): /ˈkwiːɐ̯/

queer (neuter queer, plural and definite singular attributive queer)

1. queer (not conforming to conventional sexual or gender norms) [from 1994]

• “queer” in Den Danske Ordbog

Borrowed from English queer.

• IPA^(key): /kwiʁ/

• Audio:

  (file)

queer (invariable)

1. queer (not conforming to traditional sexuality)

Borrowed from English queer.

• IPA^(key): /kwiːɐ̯/

• Audio:

  (file)

queer (strong nominative masculine singular queerer, comparative queerer, superlative am queersten)

1. (colloquial) queer
   • 2019, metamorphosen 23 – Queer: Magazin für Literatur und Kultur, metamorphosen im Verbrecher Verlag, →ISBN, page 5:

     Die nachvollziehbare Gegenwehr macht queer zu einer immer verbisseneren Chiffre für eine vermeintlich klar abgegrenzte Identität: anti-rassistisch, anti-kapitalistisch, radikal. QUEER IST UTOPISTISCH. Bin ich queer genug?

     The understandable resistance makes queer an increasingly dogged cipher for a supposedly clearly delimited identity: anti-racist, anti-capitalist, radical. QUEER IS UTOPIAN. Am I queer enough?

   • 2023 January 26, Stefan Hunglinger, “Warum dieses Jahr queere NS-Opfer im Mittelpunkt stehen”, in Der Spiegel‎^[15], →ISSN:

     Bundestagspräsidentin Bärbel Bas will bei der Holocaust-Gedenkstunde an diesem Freitag insbesondere an die queeren Opfer der Nazis erinnern. Ist das historisch korrekt?

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

   • 2022 December 21, Noemi Molitor, “Film-Highlight des Jahres: Alles, überall, auf einmal”, in Die Tageszeitung: taz‎^[16], →ISSN:

     EEAAO ist der queerste Film, den ich seit Langem gesehen habe.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

• Queer

queer (strong nominative masculine singular queerer, not comparable)

1. Alternative form of quer

queer

1. Alternative form of quer

• “queer” in Duden online
• “queer” in Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache

Unadapted borrowing from English queer.

• IPA^(key): /ˈkwir/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ir
• Syllabification: queer

queer n (indeclinable, related adjective queerowy)

1. queerness (quality of being queer, in the sense of not conforming to sexual or gender norms)

queer (not comparable, no derived adverb)

1. (relational) queer (not heterosexual, or not cisgender: homosexual, bisexual, asexual, transgender, etc.)

   Synonym: queerowy

• queer I in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• queer II in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN

• cuir

Unadapted borrowing from English queer.

• IPA^(key): /ˈkwiɾ/ [ˈkwiɾ]
• Rhymes: -iɾ

queer (invariable)

1. queer

According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.