queer
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /kwɪə/
ipa: /kwɪɹ/
ipa: /kwəɹ/
note: Indic
ipa: /kwɪr/
rhymes: -ɪə(ɹ)
Forms: form: queers
form: queering
form: queered
form: queered
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: I was a lot more apt to queer it than help it.
ref: 1955, Rex Stout, "When a Man Murders...", in Three Witnesses, October 1994 Bantam edition, page 78
synonyms: invalidate
glosses: To render an endeavor or agreement ineffective or null.
examples: text: "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 […]"
ref: 1887, G. W. Appelton, chapter II, in A Terrible Legacy: A Tale of the South Downs, London: Ward and Downey, page 12:
text: "Where do you come from?" Stanley queered.
ref: 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, http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks16/1600641.txt
glosses: To puzzle.
glosses: To ridicule; to banter; to rally.
examples: text: "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."
ref: 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, Book Two, Chapter IV, pages 270-271:
text: Well, then I got buried—shell dropped, and the dug-out caved in—and that queered me. They sent me home.
ref: 1926, D. H. Lawrence, “Glad Ghosts”, in The Complete Short Stories, volume 3, Penguin, published 1977, page 678:
text: You'll queer yourself on Broadway—you'll never get another job.
ref: 1927, 1:24:57 from the start, intertitle, in The Jazz Singer:
glosses: To spoil the effect or success of, as by ridicule; to throw a wet blanket on; to spoil.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 2003, Marcella Althaus-Reid, The Queer God, page 9:
text: Jonathan Goldberg further explores the implications of queering history in his essay in the same volume.
ref: 2006, Carla Freccero, Queer/Early/Modern, page 80:
text: 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.
ref: 2013, Mark Davidson, Deborah Martin, chapter 8, in Urban Politics: Critical Approaches, SAGE, →ISBN:
topics: human-sciences
sciences
social-science
social-sciences
synonyms: queerify
glosses: To reevaluate or reinterpret (a work) with an eye to sexual orientation and/or to gender, as by applying queer theory.
glosses: To make a work more appealing or attractive to LGBT people, such as by not having strict genders for playable characters.
Derived terms: queer someone's pitch