queue

1 of 2

noun

1
: a braid of hair usually worn hanging at the back of the head
2
: a waiting line especially of persons or vehicles
3
a
: a sequence of messages or jobs held in temporary storage awaiting transmission or processing
b
: a data structure that consists of a list of records such that records are added at one end and removed from the other

queue

2 of 2

verb

queued; queuing or queueing

transitive verb

: to arrange or form in a queue (see queue entry 1)

intransitive verb

: to line up or wait in a queue
often used with up
queuer noun

Did you know?

Is it que, queue, or q?

One of our persistent—and more puzzling—lookups is for the word que, which is entered in our dictionary (capitalized) as an abbreviation for Quebec. Qué is also a Spanish word that means “what.” That is not, however, the word that many people are looking for when they look up que in our dictionary. Que is homophonous with a number of other words, most of which have wildly different spellings and meanings. One of the words that people are looking for when they look up que is queue, a word that means “line” (as in, “We waited in the ticket queue.”) Sometimes people are looking for the homonym cue, or “a signal to start or do something” (“The lights just went out—that’s my cue to start the movie.”). Very occasionally, people look up que for coup, a word that refers to a violent and sudden overthrow or takeover of a government (“reports on the latest coup attempt”). And if you’re looking for the phonetic spelling of the letter q, try again: that’s cue.

Examples of queue in a Sentence

Noun The Tiong Bahru hawker center in Singapore might well be my favorite place in the world to start the day. I remember vividly my first visit: I arrived jetlagged and hungry at seven in the morning to find vendors stir-frying greens in gigantic woks, sending up whooshes of smoke fragrant with garlic. Long queues of businessmen and construction workers and families who likely lived in the nearby housing projects snaked from the cash register of each stall. James Oseland, Saveur, October 2008
Around the time the Soviet Union ceased to exist, I was waiting in the entry queue at Fiumicino Airport in Rome when I noticed a party of several dozen young Russian girls being fast-tracked past a freshly opened control window. Peter Robb, New York Times Book Review, 25 May 2008
But many more people deserve the Nobel than get it. Krauss should've gotten it years ago. Though by now so many other discoveries have been made that he's farther down in an ever increasing queue. Carl Djerassi, Cantor's Dilemma, 1989
We were forced to stand in a queue. Three jobs remain in the printer queue. Verb The World's Food Fair, Boston. October 1896. Admission: 25 cents. Huge crowds throng the Mechanics Hall convention center. Women queue up for free samples from 200 different vendors: cereals, gelatins, extracts, candy, and custards. Christopher Kimball, Cook's Illustrated, January & February 2008
Nothing hacks off a national lawmaker more than a person who will not wait in line, unless that line is in front of an elevator at the U.S. Capitol, where Senators and Representatives use private elevators, lest they have to queue with their constituents. Steve Rushin, Time, 10 Sept. 2007
The crowd was queuing at the snack bar.
Recent Examples on the Web
Noun
Wait It Out: As a last resort, wait for your queue to expire. Chad Murphy, The Enquirer, 8 Mar. 2024 The tour promoter reported that over a million people were in the queue to try to get get seats. Katie Bain, Billboard, 1 Mar. 2024 For the first time ever, a Lavazza station offered up pours behind the press line and the queue was several deep for most of the morning. Chris Gardner, The Hollywood Reporter, 26 Feb. 2024 Devotees queue at the Ram Mandir on January 23, 2024. Rhea Mogul, CNN, 4 Feb. 2024 Currently, non-English speakers are directed to wait in a queue for a translator when there’s no one readily available to assist them in their language, Rodriguez said. Caroline Petrow-Cohen, Los Angeles Times, 1 Feb. 2024 And judging by the queues in central Barcelona to access the booth, there is plenty of user excitement for some hands-on experience. Zak Doffman, Forbes, 25 Feb. 2024 For instance, if Gemini generated 10 images for each prompt, Google would have the system analyze the skin tone of the people depicted in the images and push images of people with darker skin higher up in the queue. Nitasha Tiku, Washington Post, 23 Feb. 2024 PreCheck, which requires an in-person appointment to show documents and give fingerprints, and biometric verification by Clear, a private screening company, have helped to reduce the wait time for screening, but air travelers still must occasionally stand in long queues to get to their gates. Christine Chung, New York Times, 18 Feb. 2024
Verb
Downstairs, models are queuing up to be seen, and boxes of clothes are being bustled in and out of the front door, blasts of February air chilling the otherwise frenetic atmosphere. Nicole Phelps, Vogue, 2 Mar. 2024 Last year, buyers queued up for $5 million homes and one developer sold houses worth $844 million in hours. Zainab Fattah, Fortune, 19 Feb. 2024 Key Facts Voting opened in South Carolina at 7 a.m. EST and will continue until 7 p.m., though voters can still cast votes as long as they are queued at the poll’s closing time. Ty Roush, Forbes, 24 Feb. 2024 Devil's Bridge is one of the most popular hikes in Arizona Thousands make the pilgrimage each year to queue up for a photo atop the 50-foot-high arching formation in Red Rock Secret Mountain Wilderness in Coconino National Forest, just a few miles from Uptown Sedona. Mare Czinar, The Arizona Republic, 16 Feb. 2024 Some had queued up outside the Fillmore as early as noon, and the disturbing Mercer news that arrived midafternoon hit with a wallop. Brian McCollum, Detroit Free Press, 27 Jan. 2024 As for queuing up a movie or TV show in under an hour? Jonathan Soroff, Robb Report, 8 Feb. 2024 Al-Haw was queueing at a water station in Jabalya refugee camp, in northern Gaza, when he and dozens of others were struck by Israeli bombardment, Hamouda said. Sana Noor Haq, CNN, 30 Jan. 2024 Pictures on social media Thursday morning show crowds in the thousands gathered outside UN facilities, people queuing for hours to try and get some food. Zoe Magee, ABC News, 10 Dec. 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'queue.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Etymology

Noun and Verb

French, literally, tail, from Old French cue, coe, from Latin cauda, coda

First Known Use

Noun

1748, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Verb

1777, in the meaning defined at transitive sense

Time Traveler
The first known use of queue was in 1748

Dictionary Entries Near queue

Cite this Entry

“Queue.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/queue. Accessed 18 Mar. 2024.

Kids Definition

queue

1 of 2 noun
1
: a pigtail usually worn hanging at the back of the head
2
: a waiting line
a queue at a ticket window
3
: a sequence of messages or jobs held in temporary storage in a computer awaiting transmission or processing

queue

2 of 2 verb
queued; queuing or queueing
1
: to arrange or form in a queue
2
: to line up or wait in a queue
the crowd queued up for tickets
queuer noun
Etymology

Noun

from French queue, literally, "tail," from Latin coda, cauda "tail" — related to coda, coward, cue entry 3 see Word History at coward

Word Origin
The Latin word cauda or coda, meaning "tail," passed into French and in time ended up being spelled queue. English borrowed this word, giving it the meaning "a long braid of hair," one that hangs from a person's head like a tail. This sense is still in use, but we more commonly refer to such a braid as a pigtail today. In the 19th century, queue came to be used for something else that looked like a tail—a number of people waiting in line.

More from Merriam-Webster on queue

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