Word.ws English Dictionary

q-word

q-word noun: the word queer. Also the alternative letter-case form of Q-word.

Noun (1)

q-word (plural q-words)

  1. The word queer.
    • Last semester, I noticed that students in my Introduction to Queer Studies course (Queer Theory/Queer Lives) were just as interested in the b-word (bisexuality) as the q-word (queer). They perked up when I made references to the history of bisexual movements, and by the end of the semester they...2005, Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, Agatha Beins, Women's Studies for the Future: Foundations, Interrogations, Politics, Rutgers University Press, →ISBN, page 97
  2. (humorous, at a workplace) The word quiet, taken as a bad omen that once uttered the workplace will suddenly become exceptionally busy.
    • Even among Western doctors and surgeons, there is a widely held superstition about the q-word - 'quiet' - which should never be spoken during a hospital shift.2025, Alice Mah, Red Pockets: A Tale of Inheritance, Ghosts and the Future, Doubleday Canada, →ISBN, page 128
  3. Any word beginning with q, especially one that is not normally taboo but is considered (often humorously) to be so in the given context.

Noun (2) capitalized: Q-word

Q-word (plural Q-words)

  1. A question word.
    • Cross-linguistically, a distinctive characteristic of this mood type is the presence of a question word (‘Q-word’) in the clause that queries missing information [...]2018, The Routledge Handbook of African Linguistics, →ISBN, page 104
  2. Alternative letter-case form of q-word (“any word beginning with q”).

Also used as

q-word is also the alternative letter-case form of Q-word.

Forms of q-word

pluralq-words
alternative formQ-word
pluralQ-words
alternative formq-word

Questions about q-word

What does q-word mean?
Q-word means the word queer.
What part of speech is q-word?
Q-word is a noun.
What is the plural of q-word?
The plural of q-word is q-words.

Words near q-word in the dictionary

  1. q-tofs
  2. Q-value
  3. Q-values
  4. Q-wave
  5. Q-waves
  6. q-word
  7. q-words
  8. q.
  9. Q. C.
  10. q. e. d.
  11. q. v.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: q-word (page history and authors); Q-word (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “q-word.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/q-word. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.