Definition of QUEUE

Synonyms for queue

Synonyms: Noun

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

With higher tariffs looming, bigger brands pressured their manufacturing partners in China to place them at the top of the queue, leaving smaller brands like Xero at a disadvantage. — Aldo Svaldi, The Denver Post, "Tariffs squeezing Colorado exporters and importers alike," 12 Sep. 2019 The Orlando land was met by a throng of parkgoers and a digital queue was needed not long after the gates opened. — Ryan Parker, The Hollywood Reporter, "Mark Hamill Describes How Gross That Blue Milk Tasted in 'Star Wars'," 30 Aug. 2019 The queue is significantly shorter now (if any), but the brand remains a juggernaut. — Michael Hiller, Los Angeles Times, "Characters invade Las Vegas, from Tim Burton to Hello Kitty," 21 Aug. 2019 By reducing the number of frames in the render queue, new frames are sent to your GPU sooner, reducing latency and improving responsiveness. — Gordon Mah Ung, PCWorld, "Nvidia's massive Gamescom Game Ready driver improves performance, latency and sharpness," 20 Aug. 2019 The lunchtime queue at Mustafa Gemüse Kebab in Berlin (above) is 45 minutes long. — 1843, "Don’t knock the doner kebab," 10 July 2019 This list is not explicitly a queue of players who would be ranked from 101-125, but a combination of two groups: those who came close to making the Top 100 and those who are notable in some other capacity. — Rob Mahoney, SI.com, "Top 100 NBA Players of 2020: Biggest Snubs," 9 Sep. 2019 She and her companions, all virgins, so innocent, had been plucked from their camp to service queues of impatient army officers. — The Economist, "Obituary: Jan Ruff O’Herne died on August 19th," 5 Sep. 2019 The queue of applicants—there were 251 in line as of late July—and the attendant monthslong waiting times are frustrating scientists interested in the basic biology and therapeutic possibilities of cannabis. — Meredith Wadman, Science | AAAS, "‘The system is swamped.’ Canada can't keep up with requests to study cannabis," 19 Aug. 2019

Recent Examples on the Web: Verb

The Ultra-low latency mode will work on DirectX 9 and DirectX 11 titles, but DirectX 12 and Vulkan games decide when to queue the frame. — Tom Warren, The Verge, "Nvidia releases big driver update with ultra-low latency mode, integer scaling, and more," 20 Aug. 2019 Yugoslav Colonel Zoltan Dani employed a unique strategy, using a low bandwidth radar to queue the activation of a higher bandwidth, just when the F-117 would be visible to it. — Alex Hollings, Popular Mechanics, "Why the F-117 Nighthawk Is Such a Badass Plane," 12 Aug. 2019 But fans can still queue up for the next best thing at the BBC America’s booth (No. — Pam Kragen, San Diego Union-Tribune, "What it’s like to play the new ‘Doctor Who’ virtual reality game," 18 July 2019 More good news: a queueing app will minimize the lines. — San Diego Union-Tribune, "Comic-Con 2019: 50 things to see at this year’s Comic-Con," 17 July 2019 Women queue in line to cast their votes in the village of Tumfafi, near Kano. — Joe Parkinson, WSJ, "Nigeria’s Election Gets Under Way After a Stop-Start Runup," 23 Feb. 2019 And as the most dedicated fans who queue overnight well already know, the excitement of Wimbledon validates a poor night's sleep and year-long wait. — Jaimie Potters, Town & Country, "The Best Ways to Experience Wimbledon," 7 Aug. 2019 Last year the museum had almost 700,000 visitors, who sometimes queued for hours to get in. — The Economist, "How the Jewish Museum Berlin fell out with Jews," 25 July 2019 Over on the Braintree branch, Saba Ghaffar settled into a seat a little after 8 a.m. and prepped for the uncertain journey, queuing up music on her phone. — BostonGlobe.com, "For Red Line commutes, a roll of the dice and branch determine timing," 6 Aug. 2019

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'queue.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.