Other forms: queers
Queer is an older word meaning strange or odd. A queer feeling, a queer sort of afternoon, queer goings-on.
That sense is now dated and survives mainly in older writing and in phrases like queer fish, meaning an odd person. The word's main modern use is entirely different: it is an umbrella term for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, reclaimed from decades of use as a slur. Reclaimed words are safe from inside a community and not from outside it, so queer is used freely by many LGBTQ people and by academics in queer theory, and is best left alone by others. Note queer somebody's pitch, meaning to spoil their chances.
1adjectivequeerStrange or odd, in older use.
“There was a queer atmosphere in the house that afternoon.”
2verbspoilTo spoil something, in the phrase queer somebody's pitch.
“One badly timed letter queered the whole negotiation.”
queer is a quality of strangeness.
The word probably comes from a Germanic root meaning oblique or crosswise, related to thwart. Its use as an insult began in the late nineteenth century, and the reclaiming began in earnest around 1990.
Proto-Indo-European
*terkʷ- — to turn, twist, wind
Proto-Germanic
*þwerhaz
Proto-West Germanic
*þwerh
Old Saxon
thwerh
English, today
queer
Built from
Attested since about 1510, at first in Scots -. Usually taken to be from Middle Low German - (Brunswick dialect) queer (“oblique, off-centre”) or the related German quer (“diagonal”), from Old Saxon thwerh, from Proto-West Germanic þwerh, from Proto-Germanic þwerhaz, from Proto-Indo-European terkʷ- (“to turn, twist, wind”); compare Latin torqueō, and see more at thwart. The OED argues against this due to the semantic differences and the date at which the word appears in Scots. Began to be used to describe gay people in the late 1800s; see usage notes for more.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire