queen1
/kwiːn
/noun
1The female ruler of an independent state, especially one who inherits the position by right of birth: [as title]: Queen Victoria [as complement]: he insisted the princess could be crowned queen...
- She became a queen and gave birth to a future queen, and in the process became beloved by the British people.
- Only 30% favour having a king or queen who inherits the position for life.
- In the 1840s, the Ardverikie Estate was leased by the Duke of Abercorn, a senior aide to Prince Albert, the queen's husband.
1.1 (also Queen Consort) A king’s wife.The impressive scale of this escort was designed to convey an unmistakable message about the status and importance of those who were to be accompanied, namely the queen consort of the King of Scotland and England and the royal children....
- Salomon, the eldest, arrived first, around 1607, and his earliest works were for the queen consort, Anne of Denmark.
- Before departing, the king directed that his queen consort should follow him to London within about twenty days.
1.2A woman or thing regarded as the finest or most outstanding in a particular sphere or group: the queen of the social columns...
- Sunday was family day and the best-dressed lady was selected from the many queens of fashion that paraded the latest styles throughout the course.
- In the studio the Eastenders cast will get makeovers from fashion queens Trinny and Susannah as part of a What Not To Wear special.
- Also, since you've been called the queen of fantasy romance, i could use any pointers you have!
Synonyms
doyenne, star, leading light, celebrity, big name, superstar, top dog, queen bee, mistress, prima donna, idol, heroine, favourite, darling;
goddess, belle, pin-up
1.3A woman or girl chosen to hold the most important position in a festival or event: she’s the official carnival queen...
- Jill's post about this, and her analogy to the unpopular girl winning homecoming queen, made me want to go and vote.
- Two vintage cars, owned by Mr Mchugh, carried the carnival queen and the mayor.
- Leanne has had her heart set on becoming the carnival queen for a number of years and was really delighted.
1.4 (the Queen) dated (In the UK) the national anthem when there is a female sovereign.
1.5 informal A man’s wife or girlfriend.
2The most powerful chess piece that each player has, able to move in any direction along a rank, file, or diagonal on which it stands.As far as movement, he's as versatile as the queen piece on a chess board....
- On move 20, the two players liquidated their queens and after swapping pieces in the next 10 moves, they were almost in a balanced position.
- After the queens came off on move 40, Korchnoi was left with 6 pawns to Galliamova's knight and 2 soldiers.
3A playing card bearing a representation of a queen, normally ranking next below a king and above a jack.You should generally try to avoid playing aces, kings, queens and jacks except when capturing or building with them....
- A Kirby is often used when a player has many trumps, or cards above the value of queens (kings and Aces).
- The object is to take tricks containing aces, 10s, kings, queens and jacks.
4 Entomology A reproductive female in a colony of social ants, bees, wasps, or termites, frequently the only one present in a colony.We present data on reproductive partitioning among queens in the ant Leptothorax rugatulus with special emphasis on relatedness and body size....
- Mound densities were 33 percent less in sites with the parasitic ant, and the number of fire ant queens was 47 percent less in parasitized colonies.
- But in an unusual role reversal, paper wasp queens beg their young for a meal.
5An adult female cat that has not been spayed.Mousers left their prey, elder toms left their warm places by the fire, kittens left their meals, queens grabbed a kitten from their nest, and they all ran to the woods.
6 informal A male homosexual, typically one regarded as ostentatiously effeminate.
verb [with object]
1 (queen it over) (Of a woman) behave in an unpleasantly superior way towards (someone): Monique was queening it over everybody...
- Formerly the Queen of the Groucho Club, she now spends more time queening it over Brighton where she lives.
- Her in-laws irked her, and she tried to queen it over them, with results resembling the outcome likely to have occurred if Isabella of Castile had issued edicts in a church hall on bingo night.
- I've no element of self-loathing but I do realise that part of my success is just me showing off, and wanting to queen it over other people, to be frank with you.
2 Chess Convert (a pawn) into a queen when it reaches the opponent’s back rank on the board.A Slav drawn in 22 moves after a short burst of excitement where Kramnik gave up his queen, then queened a pawn to re-establish material equality....
- Both players queened a pawn after 56 moves, but Korchnoi managed to check and grab the knight leaving him up 2 passed pawns, and Galliamova resigned after 64 moves.
- Winning one more pawn, Saravanan never looked back and closed in on his opponent in a rook-bishop-knight ending by queening his pawn.
Derivatives
queendom
- Baron of Bunkum - the best source for dross and drivel in the queendom!
- Before she danced and sang her way to pop queendom, Madonna attended which university?
- ‘Most would have been monumentally crestfallen to have queendom stolen away from them,’ he said.
queenless
- He became the first queenless king in all of history!
- Bareev opts to squeeze Shirov in the minimalist queenless middlegame arising from a Queen's Gambit Accepted - the position type seen in the memorable game 4 of the recent Kramnik-Kasparov match - where Bareev was a Kramnik second.
- This was a more dramatic example, as in a queenless middlegame White played b4-b5 (without a- or c-pawns) while Black had pawns on a6 and c6.
queenlike
- This will give an indication of how queen-like the anarchistic worker-laid eggs are, because the viability of worker-laid and queen-laid eggs are similar, so any differences in persistence will be the result of egg removal.
- Ovaries were assigned categorical scores from zero (no visible oocyte development, filamentous) to three (fully developed, queen-like ovaries).
- Gillot in Colerique, with sharp movements and hot temper, was in her elements and led the company on to the finale with a queen-like authority.
queenship
- But the chess queen's fascinating history calls for a more nuanced understanding of queenship, if such an institution existed, of the interaction of symbol and meaning and of the complex interplay of historical change.
- Caesar receives Antony's schoolmaster, sent with terms for peace: continuing queenship for Cleopatra, and a private life in either Alexandria or Athens for Antony.
- That the queenship is vacant, that Esther meets the standards for being elected, is indeed taken to the court, and pleases the king, are but a few of the many coincidences that lead to the salvation of the Jews.
queenhood
Origin
Old English cwēn, of Germanic origin; related to quean.
The Old English spelling of queen was cwēn. This originally meant ‘a wife’, specifically that of a king or some other important man. Related to cwēn was Old English cwene ‘woman’, which became the archaic quean, ‘a bold or impudent woman’, sometimes encountered in Shakespeare's work. In the 16th and 17th centuries it was also a term for a prostitute. Because the two words came to be pronounced in the same way the derogatory sense dropped out of use as too confusing. The sense of queen ‘an effeminate gay man’ dates from the beginning of the 20th century.
Rhymes
Queen2
/kwiːn/A British rock group featuring camp vocalist Freddie Mercury (1946–91). Queen were known for their extravagant, almost operatic brand of rock, as exemplified by the hugely successful ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (1975).