queue

English Online Dictionary. What means queue‎? What does queue mean?

English

Etymology

From Middle English queue, quew, qwew, couwe, from Anglo-Norman queue, keu and Old French cöe, cue, coe (“tail”), from Vulgar Latin cōda, from Latin cauda. See also Middle French queu, cueue. Doublet of coda.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /kjuː/
• (General American) enPR: kyo͞o, IPA^(key): /kju/
• Hyphenation: queue
• Rhymes: -uː
• Homophones: cue, Kew, kyu, Q, que

Noun

queue (plural queues)

1. (UK, Ireland, Commonwealth, less common in North America) A line of people, vehicles or other objects, usually one to be dealt with in sequence (i.e., the one at the front end is dealt with first, the one behind is dealt with next, and so on), and which newcomers join at the opposite end (the back). [from 19th c.]
2. A waiting list or other means of organizing people or objects into a first-come-first-served order.
3. (computing) A data structure in which objects are added to one end, called the tail, and removed from the other, called the head (in the case of a FIFO queue). The term can also refer to a LIFO queue or stack where these ends coincide. [from 20th c.]
   • 2005, David Flanagan, Java in a Nutshell, p. 234,

     Queue implementations are commonly based on insertion order as in first-in, first-out (FIFO) queues or last-in, first-out queues (LIFO queues are also known as stacks).

4. (heraldry) An animal's tail. [from 16th c.]
5. (now historical) A men's hairstyle with a braid or ponytail at the back of the head, such as that worn by men in Imperial China. [from 18th c.]
   • 1912, Herbert Allen Giles, China and the Manchus, Chapter III — Shun Chih:

     A large number of loyal officials, rather than shave the front part of the head and wear the Manchu queue, voluntarily shaved the whole head, […]

Synonyms

• (line of people, vehicles, etc): line (US), lineup (Canada)

Hyponyms

Derived terms

Related terms

• caudal
• quevée

Translations

Verb

queue (third-person singular simple present queues, present participle queueing or queuing, simple past and past participle queued)

1. (intransitive) To put oneself or itself at the end of a waiting line.
2. (intransitive) To arrange themselves into a physical waiting queue.
3. (computing, transitive) To add to a queue data structure.
4. To fasten the hair into a queue.

Synonyms

• (place itself at the end of a queue): join a queue, join the queue, line up

Derived terms

• dequeue
• enqueue
• queue up

Translations

See also

• FIFO
• LIFO
• cue

Further reading

• Queue on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Queue in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

French

Alternative forms

• queüe (obsolete)
• queuë (obsolete)

Etymology

Inherited from Middle French queu, cueue, from Old French cue, coe, from Vulgar Latin cōda, variant of Latin cauda. Doublet of coda.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kø/
• Homophones: qu’eux, queux, queues
• Rhymes: -ø

Noun

queue f (plural queues)

1. tail
2. queue, line

   Synonym: file d’attente

3. (snooker) cue
4. (vulgar) cock, dick (penis)

   Synonym: bite

Derived terms

Descendants

• → Danish: kø
• → Dutch: keu
• → English: queue, cue
• → German: Queue
• → Norwegian: kø
• → Swedish: kö

Further reading

• “queue” in the Dictionnaires d’autrefois
• “queue”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Old French

Noun

queue oblique singular, f (oblique plural queues, nominative singular queue, nominative plural queues)

1. Alternative form of cue