Other forms: queues, queuing, queueing, queued
A queue is a line of people waiting one behind another — at a bus stop, a till, a passport desk. It is the standard British word; American English says line, and stands in line rather than in a queue.
The spelling is the difficulty and there is no trick to it: five letters, four of them silent, said exactly like the letter Q. Watch the verb forms too — queuing and queueing are both accepted, which helps nobody. Computing borrowed the word for jobs waiting their turn, and it is now the ordinary term for anything lined up in order: a print queue, a queue of messages, first in and first out. And jumping the queue is a small social crime with a name of its own, which says something about where the word comes from.
1nounqueueA line of people waiting for something, one behind another.
“The queue for tickets went round the corner.”
synonyms: line, row
2verblineTo wait in a line.
“We queued for an hour in the rain.”
3nounlistA list of things waiting to be dealt with in order.
“There are nine documents in the print queue.”
queue is a line of people waiting.
Also accepted in games: line
Latin cauda meant a tail, and Old French coue kept it. A queue was first a tail, then a plait of hair hanging down the back, and only then a line of people — each sense the same picture: something long trailing behind.
Latin
cauda
Vulgar Latin
cōda
Old French
cöe
Anglo-Norman
queue
Middle English
queue
English, today
queue
Built from
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. a doublet of coda and cola.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA