queer
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /kwɪə/
ipa: /kwɪɹ/
ipa: /kwəɹ/
note: Indic
ipa: /kwɪr/
rhymes: -ɪə(ɹ)
Forms: form: queerer
form: queerest
form: qwer
Etymology: 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”), 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.
Began to be used to describe gay people in the late 1800s, see usage notes for more.
Senses: examples: text: An old long-faced, long-bodied servant, gave a queer look
ref: 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:
text: “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.”
ref: 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:
text: 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.
ref: 1877, Ulysses S. Grant, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant: November 1, 1876-September 30, 1878, page 252:
text: 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!
ref: 1885, David Dixon Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War, page 274:
text: 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.
ref: 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter V, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
text: “’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 (...)
ref: 1920, H. P. Lovecraft, The Picture in the House:
text: 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.
text: A queer look came over John Arable's face. He seemed almost ready to cry himself.
ref: 1952, E. B. White, Charlotte's Web, page 3:
text: Though it may seem very queer,
we've got no jobs to give you here,
so we are sending you to Vietnam.
ref: 1965, “Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation”, Tom Paxton (lyrics), Tom Paxton (music):
text: When the lights popped out, when the smoke began to clear / It was positively queer
ref: 1971, David Bowie, “Bombers”:
synonyms: word: aberrant
word: abnormal
word: alien
word: anomalous
word: as queer as Dick's hatband
word: bizarre
word: curious
word: deviant
word: discrepant
word: eerie
word: eldritch
word: errant
word: exceptional
word: extraordinary
word: fey
word: forby
word: freak
word: freakish
word: freaky
word: fremd
word: funny
word: heteroclite
word: hinky
word: incongruous
word: incongruitous
word: irregular
word: kooky
word: monstrous
word: nonstandard
word: odd
word: outlandish
word: out of the ordinary
word: outré
word: peculiar
word: quaint
word: queer
word: queer as a clockwork orange
word: queer as a nine bob note
word: queer as a three dollar bill
word: queer as a coot
word: queer as Dick's hatband
word: rare
word: rum
word: rummy
word: selcouth
word: seld
word: singular
word: strange
word: trippy
word: uncanny
word: uncommon
word: unconventional
word: unearthly
word: unexpected
word: unreasonable
word: unusual
word: unwonted
word: weird
word: weirdsome
word: yampy
word: different
word: differing
word: dissimilar
word: diverse
word: other
word: unalike
word: unlike
glosses: Strange, odd, or different; whimsical.
examples: text: I felt queer after eating those shrimp.
text: 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.
ref: 1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter V, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC:
text: "Well, I'm—I'm jiggered," said Peter, and his voice also sounded queer.
ref: 1951, C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia:
text: 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.
ref: 1954, Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, →ISBN, page 3:
synonyms: word: diseased
word: disease-ridden
word: infect
word: infected
word: morbid
word: morbific
word: morbose
word: unhealthy
glosses: Slightly unwell.
glosses: Drunk.
examples: text: “Such a Momma’s boy.” The old men had started up again—or perhaps they had never stopped. “No matter who he schtupped. Even Marilyn. I wouldn’t be surprised he was queer.” / “Strange, yes. Weird, yes. Queer, I don’t think.”
ref: 1979, Michael Nickolay, chapter 9, in Brother & Sister: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: J. B. Lippincott Company, →ISBN, page 100:
text: This is a one-shot thing we got goin’ on here. […] You know I ain’t queer.
ref: 2005, Larry McMurtry, Diana Ossana, directed by Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain, spoken by Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger):
glosses: Homosexual.
synonyms: word: homophile
word: homosexual
word: like that
word: queer
word: similisexual
word: that way
glosses: Non-heterosexual or non-cisgender: homosexual, bisexual, asexual, transgender, etc.
examples: text: the queer community
text: 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?
ref: 1999, Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, Routledge, published 2002, preface to 1999 edition:
text: 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".
ref: 2022, Marisol Cortez, “Ambivalent Anality: Revisiting the Queer Ecology of the "Jackass Moment"”, in Media+Environment:
text: And yet queer and transgender people are finding a place in a lifestyle that, at least online, often occupies the same digital space as content from conservative creators, said Devin Proctor, an assistant professor of anthropology at Elon University in North Carolina who studies how we construct identities online.
ref: 2025 March 30, Scottie Andrew, “Queer and trans homesteaders are conquering the social media frontier”, in CNN:
glosses: Pertaining to sexual or gender behaviour or identity which does not conform to conventional heterosexual or cisgender norms, assumptions etc.
Derived terms: anarcha-queer
as queer as Dick's hatband
catch the queer
Fully Automated Luxury Queer Space Communism
genderqueer
quare
queer anarchism
queer anarchist
queerantine
queer as a clockwork orange
queer as a coot
queer as a nine bob note
queer as a three-dollar bill
queer as a three dollar bill
queer as Dick's hatband
queer baiting
queer-baiting
queer-bash
queer basher
queer bashing
queer-bashing
queercore
queer duck
queer fish
queer in the head
queerish
queer ken
queer liberation
queerly
queerness
queer parade
queerplatonic
Queer Street
queer studies
queer theory
queer up
there's nowt so queer as folk