q-words

Noun

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.

See all 4 meanings of q-word