queue
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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5 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "queue", 5-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "queue" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "queue" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
queue is aEnglishnoun. It means: 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 n... Pronounced /kjuː/. It ranks #9,946 in English word frequency. Often confused with quite and quote.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | queue |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /kjuː/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #9,946 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 14 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for queue is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /kjuː/. Corpus data places it at rank #9,946 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for queue, with forms such as "qeuue", "qqueue", and "queeu". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 14 confusable-pair relationships, "quite", "quote", "queues", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: 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 and cola. Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is queue, spelled Q-U-E-U-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A 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).
- 2A waiting list or other means of organizing people or objects into a first-come-first-served order.
- 3A 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.
- 4An animal's tail.
- 5A men's hairstyle with a braid or ponytail at the back of the head, such as that worn by men in Imperial China.
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 and cola.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: qeuue,qqueue,queeu,quuee,uqeue
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for queue
Misspelling Variants of "queue"
Frequency rank: #9,946 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter Q in our English index: