Word.ws English Dictionary

Queequeg

Queequeg proper noun: a fictional sidekick character in American author Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick, the multiracial tattooed Polynesian cannibal prince and skilled harpooner who became a whaler on European vessels out of wanderlust. Queequeg practices an alien fictional religion and constantly engages in feats of bravado intimidating to the white and ethnically-European protagonist but befriends him and shows no resentment at treatment by white societies. Melville's text describes him as “George Washington cannibalistically developed”.

Proper noun

Queequeg

  1. A fictional sidekick character in American author Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick, the multiracial tattooed Polynesian cannibal prince and skilled harpooner who became a whaler on European vessels out of wanderlust. Queequeg practices an alien fictional religion and constantly engages in feats of bravado intimidating to the white and ethnically-European protagonist but befriends him and shows no resentment at treatment by white societies. Melville's text describes him as “George Washington cannibalistically developed”.
    • Half British and half Aboriginal, Bony is in his early to middle forties. Like Herman Melville's Queequeg before him, Bony benefits from his mixture of races.1999, Ray B. Browne, “Bonaparte, Napoleon”, in Rosemary Herbert, editor, The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing, Oxford University Press, →DOI, →ISBN
    • As they stroll out together they evoke stares, not because of Queequeg's outlandish tattooing (since New Bedford's whaling port draws a worldwide sailor population), but because of the easy companionship of a dark-skinned man with a white. Melville seems to raise the question, What might America...2004, Joyce A. Rowe, “Herman Melville's Moby-Dick”, in Jay Parini, editor, The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature, Oxford University Press, →DOI, →ISBN; republished as Philip W. Leininger...

Noun

Queequeg (plural Queequegs)

  1. A person, fictional character, or other foil who literally or symbolically fulfills one or more of the roles Queequeg played in Moby-Dick such as the noble savage, Entwicklungsroman guru or exemplar, or racially-inflected spear carrier role.
    • This type of programme envisaged might do something towards combating the 'Queequeg Syndrome', which is an induced psychiatric illness, due to the patient being treated as abnormal. The cause is similar to that of institutional neurosis, but it affects patients outside hospital and is due to the...1969, John Anthony Whitehead, Morgan David Enoch, “Do We Need Psychiatric Hospitals?”, in Mental Health, volume 28 (Autumn), London: National Association for Mental Health, →ISSN, →OCLC, →PMID, pages...
    • After that I was regarded as comic. I became a ‘coconut’—someone brown on the outside, white on the inside. I was the bleached academic—more white than the anglo professors. In my classes several students glared at me, clearly seeing in me the person they feared ever becoming. Who was I, after all...1982, Richard Rodriguez, “Profession”, in Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 162

Examples of Queequeg in a sentence

  • This type of programme envisaged might do something towards combating the 'Queequeg Syndrome', which is an induced psychiatric illness, due to the patient being treated as abnormal.1969, John Anthony Whitehead, Morgan David Enoch, “Do We Need Psychiatric Hospitals?”, in Mental Health, volume 28 (Autumn), London...
  • Who was I, after all, but some comic Queequeg, holding close to my breast a reliquary containing the white powder of a dead European civilization?1982, Richard Rodriguez, “Profession”, in Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher, →ISBN...

Forms of Queequeg

pluralQueequegs

Words formed from Queequeg

Questions about Queequeg

What does Queequeg mean?
Queequeg means a fictional sidekick character in American author Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick, the multiracial tattooed Polynesian cannibal prince and skilled harpooner who became a whaler on European vessels out of wanderlust. Queequeg practices an alien fictional religion and constantly engages in feats of bravado intimidating to the white and ethnically-European protagonist but befriends him and shows no resentment at treatment by white societies. Melville's text describes him as “George Washington cannibalistically developed”.
How do you use Queequeg in a sentence?
This type of programme envisaged might do something towards combating the 'Queequeg Syndrome', which is an induced psychiatric illness, due to the patient being treated as abnormal.
What part of speech is Queequeg?
Queequeg can be a proper noun or a noun.

Words near Queequeg in the dictionary

  1. QueeNZlanders
  2. queep
  3. queeped
  4. queeping
  5. queeps
  6. Queequeg
  7. Queequeg syndrome
  8. Queequegs
  9. queequehatch
  10. queequehatches
  11. queer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Queequeg (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.

Last updated:

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