queer

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Archived revision by Eroica (talk | contribs) as of 08:04, 23 October 2020.
Jump to navigation Jump to search

English

English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

Alternative forms

Etymology

Lua error: The template Template:PIE root does not use the parameter(s): 
2=terkʷ
Please see Module:checkparams for help with this warning.

(deprecated template usage)

Attested since about 1510, from Scots, perhaps from Middle Low German (Brunswick dialect) queer (“oblique, off-center”) (also compare with German quer (“diagonally”)), from Proto-Germanic *þwerhaz, from Proto-Indo-European *terkʷ- (“to turn, twist, wind”). Compare Latin torqueo. Related to thwart. Began to be used to describe gay people in the late 1800s, see usage notes for more.

Pronunciation

  • Lua error in Module:parameters at line 360: Parameter 1 should be a valid language or etymology language code; the value "GenAm" is not valid. See WT:LOL and WT:LOL/E. enPR: kwîr, IPA(key): /kwɪɹ/
  • Lua error in Module:parameters at line 360: Parameter 1 should be a valid language or etymology language code; the value "RP" is not valid. See WT:LOL and WT:LOL/E. enPR: kwîr, IPA(key): /kwɪə/
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɪə(ɹ)

Adjective

queer (comparative queerer, superlative queerest)

  1. (dated) Weird, odd or different; whimsical. [from 16th c.]
    • (Can we find and add a quotation of Washington Irving to this entry?)
    • 1865, Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
      “I wish I hadn’t cried so much!” said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. “I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That will be a queer thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer to-day.”
    • 1877, Ulysses S. Grant, page 252, The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant: November 1, 1876–September 30, 1878
      One thing has struck me as a bit queer. During my two terms of office the whole Democratic press, and the morbidly honest and 'reformatory' portion of the Republican press, thought it horrible to keep U.S. troops stationed in the Southern States, and when they were called upon to protect the lives of negroes–as much citizens under the Constitution as if their skins were white–the country was scarcely large enough to hold the sound of indignation belched forth by them for some years. Now, however, there is no hesitation about exhausting the whole power of the government to suppress a strike on the slightest intimation that danger threatens.
    • 1885, David Dixon Porter, page 274, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War
      It looked queer to me to see boxes labeled "His Excellency, Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America." The packages so labeled contained Bass ale or Cognac brandy, which cost "His Excellency" less than we Yankees had to pay for it. Think of the President drinking imported liquors while his soldiers were living on pop-corn and water!
    • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 5, in Mr. Pratt's Patients:
      Of all the queer collections of humans outside of a crazy asylum, it seemed to me this sanitarium was the cup winner. […] When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose.
    • 1927, J. B. S. Haldane, “Possible Worlds” in Possible Worlds and Other Papers, London: Chatto & Windus,[4], [5]
      Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
  2. (British, informal, dated) Slightly unwell (mainly in "to feel queer"). [from 18th c.]
    • 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 5, in Mr. Pratt's Patients:
      Of all the queer collections of humans outside of a crazy asylum, it seemed to me this sanitarium was the cup winner. … When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose.
  3. (British, slang) drunk.
  4. (colloquial, sometimes derogatory) Homosexual. [from 19th c.]
  5. (colloquial, sometimes derogatory) Not heterosexual, or not cisgender: homosexual, bisexual, asexual, transgender, etc.
  6. (broadly) Pertaining to sexual or gender behaviour or identity which does not conform to conventional heterosexual or cisgender norms, assumptions etc. [from 20th c.]
    the queer community
    • 1999, Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, Routledge 2002, preface to 1999 edition:
      If gender is no longer to be understood as consolidated through normative sexuality, then is there a crisis of gender that is specific to queer contexts?

Usage notes

  • Queer, in the sense of "gay" or "non-heterosexual", has gone in and out of use as a pejorative and as a self-identifier a number of times:[1] it began to be used to describe gay people in the late 1800s (e.g. in an 1894 letter by John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry),[2][3] and became more widespread in the US and became used as a self-identifier by American gay men by the 1910s, continuing into the 1950s, though by the 1940s younger ones considered it pejorative and preferred gay, which had been in used since the 1930s, and had come by the 1950s to encompass the whole LGBT community.[1][4] Queer began to be reclaimed as a neutral or positive descriptor by the 1980s,[5] at first most prominently by those who wanted to distinguish themselves from gay-identified people they felt had become too conservative and assimilationist.[6] Some other people oppose the term as being still pejorative, or too radical, too informal, or too technical.[7][8] The pejorative applied mainly to those assigned male at birth who were perceived as homosexual or effeminate; the reclaimed term is used by people of any sex or gender.[9] Sometimes, the word refers only to nonheterosexual people and sexuality (and thus, speakers may contrast e.g. "queer trans women" with "straight trans women"),[10] while at other times the word includes noncisgender people and is analogous to LGBT.[11][12] (Compare genderqueer.)
  • See also Wikipedia.

Synonyms

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

queer (plural queers)

  1. (colloquial, sometimes derogatory) A person who is or appears homosexual, or who has homosexual qualities.
    • 1894 November 1, John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, “[Letter from Queensbury to Alfred Montgomery, 1 Nov 1894, in the aftermath of the trial of Oscar Wilde]”, in Michael S. Foldy, editor, The Trials of Oscar Wilde: Deviance, Morality, and Late-Victorian Society, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, published 1997, page 22:
      Now that the first flush of this catastrophe and grief is passed, I write to tell you that it is a judgement on the whole lot of you. Montgomerys, The Snob Queers like [the Earl of] Rosebery & certainly Christian hypocrite [William Ewart] Gladstone [...]
    • 1914 November, Eugene Fisher, “Transmittal to the Sacramento Bee [a.k.a Shakespeare Transmittal]”, in Sharon R. Ullman, editor, Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, published 1998, →ISBN, page 64:
      [...] fourteen young men were invited [...] with the premise that they would have the opportunity of meeting some of the prominent 'queers,' [...] and the further attraction that some 'chickens' as the new recruits in the vice are called, would be available.
    • 1940 January-June, Allen Bernstein, “What to do about it: Queers”, in Millions of Queers (Our Homo America), [Unpublished MS of the United States National Library of Medicine], →OCLC, page 132:
      It is the queers themselves whose answers to "What to do about it [homosexuality]" are most important. They, rather than the normals, cops, parents, or doctors are the persons most vitally concerned.
    • 1959 May, David McReynolds, “McReynolds Reply to [Seymour] Krim”, in Mattachine Review, volume V, number 5, Los Angeles: Mattachine Society, →ISSN, page 11, column 2:
      Any blow against the queer is really a blow struck against a part of our­selves which we cannot accept or understand. I think in every case it would be correct to say that someone with a strong hostility toward homosexuals has a latent homosexual drive equal to the hostility.
    • 1968, Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant, London: Cape, →OCLC, page 207:
      If you asked the man in the modern street for his opinion of homosexuality, he would probably reply, 'I've nothing against queers myself but I wouldn't like one of them to marry my father.'
    • 1990 June, Queers Read This, Published Anonymously by Queers [Distributed at New York Pride, 1990], →OCLC, page 2, column 3:
      Queers are under siege.
      Queers are being attacked on all front and I'm afraid it's ok with us.
      In 1969, Queers were attacked. It wasn't ok. Queers fought back, took the streets. SHOUTED.
    • 2013 February 5, “Football coach suspended for Michelle Obama insult”, in USA Today‎[6], →ISSN:
      He also voiced his dislike for gays, stating: 'I don't believe in queers. I don't like queers. I don't hate them as a person, but what they do is wrong and an abomination against God.'
  2. (colloquial, sometimes derogatory) A person of any non-heterosexual sexuality or sexual identity.
  3. (colloquial, sometimes derogatory) A person of any genderqueer identity.
  4. (definite, with "the", informal, archaic) Counterfeit money.
    Synonyms: funny money, snide

Usage notes

  • See the notes on the adjective (above) for more on the meaning of the term.
  • Regarding the use of the term as a noun, compare the usage notes about gay.

Synonyms

Hypernyms

Derived terms

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

Verb

queer (third-person singular simple present queers, present participle queering, simple past and past participle queered)

  1. (transitive, dated) To render an endeavor or agreement ineffective or null.
    Synonym: invalidate
  2. (UK, dialect, dated) To puzzle.
    • 1887, G. W. Appelton, A Terrible Legacy: A Tale of the South Downs, London: Ward and Downey, Chapter II, page 12, [7]:
      "But lor-a-mussy, Jacob, how could a woman get away from here with all her boxes in the middle of the night?"
      "That's what queered me," and Spink slowly shook his head, "and queered a good many; for of course it got newsed about […] "
    • 1894, Ivan Dexter, Talmud: A Strange Narrative of Central Australia, published in serial form in Port Adelaide News and Lefevre's Peninsula Advertiser (SA), Chapter III, [8]:
      "Where do you come from?" Stanley queered.
  3. (slang, dated) To ridicule; to banter; to rally.
  4. (slang, dated) To spoil the effect or success of, as by ridicule; to throw a wet blanket on; to spoil.
    • 1920, F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, Book Two, Chapter IV, pages 270-271, [9]:
      "Food is what queered the party. We ordered a big supper to be sent up to the room about two o'clock. Alec didn't give the waiter a tip, so I guess the little bastard snitched."
    • 1926, D. H. Lawrence, "Glad Ghosts" in The Complete Short Stories, Penguin, 1977, Vol. 3, page 678:
      Well, then I got buried—shell dropped, and the dug-out caved in—and that queered me. They sent me home.
  5. (social sciences) To reevaluate or reinterpret (a work) with an eye to sexual orientation and/or to gender, as by applying queer theory.
    • 2003, Marcella Althaus-Reid, The Queer God, page 9:
      If I go, for instance, to the history of the church in Latin America, and decide to queer the history of the Jesuitic Missions, I may find that, in many ways, the missions were more sexual than Christian.
    • 2006, Carla Freccero, Queer/Early/Modern (page 80)
      Jonathan Goldberg further explores the implications of queering history in his essay in the same volume.
    • 2013, Mark Davidson, Deborah Martin, Urban Politics: Critical Approaches, SAGE (→ISBN), chapter 8:
      We might say that there has been a ‘queering’ of urban studies insofar as the metropolitan lives, subcultures and social movements of gays and lesbians are now seen as valid objects of study.

Derived terms

Translations

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

Adverb

queer (comparative more queer, superlative most queer)

  1. Queerly.

Translations

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Chauncey, George (1995) Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940‎[1], Basic Books, →ISBN, pages 13–16
    J. L. Mey, Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics (2009, →ISBN), page 821
  2. ^ Foldy, Michael S. (1997) The Trials of Oscar Wilde: Deviance, Morality, and Late-Victorian Society, Yale University Press, →ISBN, pages 22–23
  3. ^ Robb, Graham (2005) Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century, W. W. Norton & Company, →ISBN, page 262
  4. ^ Grahn, Judy (1984) Another Mother Tongue - Gay Words, Gay Worlds‎[2], Boston, MA: Beacon Press, →ISBN, pages 30–33
  5. ^ Lua error in Module:parameters at line 828: Parameter "encyclopedia" is not used by this template.
  6. ^ Lua error in Module:quote at line 896: |date= should contain a full date (year, month, day of month); use |year= for year
  7. ^ Gamson, Joshua (1995 August) “Must Identity Movements Self-Destruct? A Queer Dilemma”, in Social Problems, volume 42, number 3, →DOI, pages 390–407
  8. ^ Phillip Ayoub, David Paternotte (2014 October 28) LGBT Activism and the Making of Europe: A Rainbow Europe?‎[3], Palgrave Macmillan, →ISBN, pages 137–138
  9. ^ GLAAD media reference guide
  10. ^ Morgan Lev Edward Holleb, The A-Z of Gender and Sexuality: From Ace to Ze (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2019, →ISBN), page 140: "It's allegedly for gay men, but it includes bisexual and bicurious men, straight men, straight trans women, queer trans women, and non-binary people [...]".
    See also other citations.
  11. ^ “queer”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN. (definition 2b).
    See also citations.
  12. ^ Jodi O'Brien, Encyclopedia of Gender and Society, volume 1 (2009 ): "Queer is often used as an umbrella term to denote sexual identity within a particular community [...] a queer community may be made up of people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and so on."
    Sarah Prager, Queer, There, and Everywhere (2017): "'queer' means anyone not totally straight or not totally cisgender".

German

Etymology 1

Adjective

queer

  1. Alternative form of quer
Declension

Template:de-decl-adj-notcomp

Adverb

queer

  1. Alternative form of quer

Etymology 2

Borrowed from English queer.

Pronunciation

Adjective

queer (not comparable)

  1. (colloquial) queer
    • 2019, metamorphosen 23 – Queer: Magazin für Literatur und Kultur, metamorphosen im Verbrecher Verlag (→ISBN), page 5:
      Die nachvollziehbare Gegenwehr macht queer zu einer immer verbisseneren Chiffre für eine vermeintlich klar abgegrenzte Identität: anti-rassistisch, anti-kapitalistisch, radikal. QUEER IST UTOPISTISCH. Bin ich queer genug?
Declension

Template:de-decl-adj-notcomp

Further reading

  • “queer” in Duden online
Retrieved from "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=queer&oldid=60905528"