queue

verb

queued; queuing or queueing

transitive verb

chiefly British

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

intransitive verb

chiefly British

: to line up or wait in a queue

—often used with up

Hundreds of fans queued up for a chance to meet the singer.

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

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

Since then, leaders of foreign governments have been queuing up to visit Beijing. —Simone McCarthy, CNN Money, 5 June 2026

The venue only seats 2,600, so hordes of fans queued up for the standby list in Riverside Park before parking themselves behind bullpens. —Rebecca Alter, Vulture, 3 June 2026

And smaller tournaments will likely be queuing up to offer her hefty appearance fees to play at their events. —Charlie Eccleshare, New York Times, 1 June 2026

Behind those, another half-dozen states — Georgia and Colorado among the front-runners — are queued up based on where the RTD math looks most attractive. —Claudia Alarcón, Forbes.com, 31 May 2026

Word History

Etymology

First Known Use

1754, in the meaning defined at transitive sense

Phrases Containing queue

• jump the queue
• queue-jumping

Rhymes for queue

• blew
• blue
• boo
• brew
• chew
• chou
• clue
• coo
• coup
• crew
• cue
• dew

Kids Definition

queue

1 of 2 noun

ˈkyü 

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

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.