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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
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.
Grace Toohey, Los Angeles Times, 3 Apr. 2024
Through a partnership with Southwest Airlines, Clark glides past airport queues and gets a special escort through the TSA line.
—Sydney Page, Washington Post, 3 Apr. 2024
Eliminating Airport Queues With the rise of AI, forward-thinking industry players already challenge software development experts to find new ways to solve one of their biggest challenges: eliminating airport queues.
—Stoyan Mitov, Forbes, 27 Mar. 2024
The official Disney Parks Blog reported in August 2023 that the California ride will get an expansion of its grounds, including the queue area, and a new gift shop.
—Natalia Senanayake, Peoplemag, 26 Mar. 2024
The birds are chirping, the bees are buzzing, and your TV watching queue is getting longer.
—Kelly Lawler, USA TODAY, 25 Mar. 2024
The tool can rate congestion on a severity scale, as well as make predictions about queue length and when the traffic buildup began, which help guide decisions about which areas to prioritize and how to deal with jams.
—IEEE Spectrum, 21 Mar. 2024
Armed gangs are taking over the streets of Gaza City, fistfights and stabbings are commonplace in long queues for food, and the occasional aid trucks that arrive must brave mobs of looters.
—Taylor Luck, The Christian Science Monitor, 12 Mar. 2024
Despite its cutthroat reservation queue, Libertine also doesn’t see a ton of people trying to walk in for a meal because its location doesn’t see much foot traffic.
—Li Goldstein, Bon Appétit, 29 Feb. 2024
Demetrius Simms, Robb Report, 26 Jan. 2024
Hundreds of gift cards hang on unattended kiosks near the customer-service counter, where people queue to return broken toasters or exchange pajamas.
—Craig Silverman, ProPublica, 17 Jan. 2024
The weather in Iowa was already not great, but people queued outside for six hours, then waited inside for three more for Trump to take the stage.
—Antonia Hitchens, The New Yorker, 15 Jan. 2024
Some people go there every week and just have the same cut of meat, and then there are people who queue for two hours and have big meals with empanadas and morcilla and all the different cuts.
—Megan Spurrell, Condé Nast Traveler, 21 Mar. 2024
The pass essentially allows participants to feed into the vehicle inspection lanes on the Mexican side from a closer midpoint rather than having to queue up at the very end as other traffic must.
—Alexandra Mendoza, San Diego Union-Tribune, 9 Mar. 2024
The images from Ukraine this year look all too much like those of last year: homes reduced to shells, people queuing up for bread, soldiers helping their own and hurting the other side.
—Bishop Sand, Washington Post, 6 Dec. 2023
Locals and visitors have been happily queuing up for those glorious paper bags of sweet treats ever since.
—Lanee Lee, Forbes, 22 Feb. 2024
In the early days of the war hundreds of people, mostly men, queued at the military enlistment offices, demanding weapons and an opportunity to join the fighting.
—Yulia Drozd, ABC News, 20 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.
Dictionary Entries Near queue
Cite this Entry
“Queue.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/queue. Accessed 24 Apr. 2024.
Copy CitationKids Definition
queue
1 of 2 nounqueue
2 of 2 verbNoun
from French queue, literally, "tail," from Latin coda, cauda "tail" — related to coda, coward, cue entry 3 see Word History at coward
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