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. See More

Recent Examples on the Web: Noun While these are the DCEU movies that are already available and streaming, there are plenty more upcoming superhero movies in the queue. — Marisa Lascala, Good Housekeeping, 20 Apr. 2022 Ukraine might not be in the queue to join NATO right now, but its dogged resistance has accelerated its prospect of joining the European Union and further unmooring itself from the Russian orbit. — Washington Post, 11 Apr. 2022 Meanwhile, six of the nominees previously advanced out of the committee are already on the Senate executive calendar, putting them in the queue for a floor vote. — Tierney Sneed, CNN, 4 Apr. 2022 Sometimes, Levien said, the volunteers will move a family up in the queue because of an urgent medical need. — Kate Morrissey, San Diego Union-Tribune, 1 Apr. 2022 But after car sales rebounded faster than expected later in 2020, manufacturers have struggled to get back to the front of the queue. — Rob Nikolewski, San Diego Union-Tribune, 14 Feb. 2022 The legislation would not change the March 31 deadline to apply for rental assistance, but would prevent the evictions of those still in the queue who have not yet received the funds, either on the state or local level. — Hannah Wileystaff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 24 Mar. 2022 See what other romantic movies are set to hit the streamer this year and start adding them to your queue. — Kelsie Gibson, PEOPLE.com, 4 Feb. 2022 Whether or not The Silent Sea floats your boat, all of these shows are worth adding to your queue. — Jacob Siegal, BGR, 27 Dec. 2021 Recent Examples on the Web: Verb Should Big Thief carry you through a blustery February, queue up British diva Charli XCX to propel you into spring. — Brigid Kennedy, The Week, 20 Jan. 2022 The small, drab courtroom on the fifth floor has only 34 seats, for which media members and public attendees have to queue. — Washington Post, 6 Dec. 2021 The island nation of 22 million people is struggling with an ongoing economic crisis that has seen people forced to queue for basic goods and face hours-long power blackouts. — Rukshana Rizwie, Sophie Jeong And Alex Stambaugh, CNN, 1 Apr. 2022 During this renewal process, new subscribers can also order a subscription in advance to queue up for the best seats available before subscriptions and single tickets go on sale to the general public in July. — Beacon-news Staff, chicagotribune.com, 9 Mar. 2022 In a market slammed with viable options, finding the right accessories — such as the best noise-canceling earbuds or runner-friendly gear — can often be more difficult than deciding which song to queue next. — Thomas Hindle, The Hollywood Reporter, 2 Mar. 2022 In a measure of the trial’s significance, crowds began to queue early Thursday morning to gain entry to the courthouse in Koblenz, a tiny German city on the Rhine thousands of miles from Syria. — Nabih Bulos, Los Angeles Times, 13 Jan. 2022 Sanctions are forcing Russians to queue up at ATMs, causing the ruble to crash, and strangling livelihoods across the country. — Samanth Subramanian, Quartz, 1 Mar. 2022 While interested buyers can queue up on the waitlist, Pub Óg final pricing is still being ironed out. — Mike Dojc, Forbes, 25 Jan. 2022 See More

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.