Word.ws English Dictionary

queerbaiting

queerbaiting noun: the practice of creating homoerotic tension between two characters in a narrative work (particularly a television series) without the intention of ever developing it into an actual same-sex relationship or explicitly addressing the question of either character's sexuality.

Noun

queerbaiting (uncountable)

  1. (slang) The practice of creating homoerotic tension between two characters in a narrative work (particularly a television series) without the intention of ever developing it into an actual same-sex relationship or explicitly addressing the question of either character's sexuality.
    • Queerbaiting is erasure. It’s telling queer people that they don’t exist, or that our stories aren’t worth telling, and it’s harmful.2013 October 7, Matthew Ellison, “Queerbaiting”, in Salient, volume 76, number 23, Victoria University of Wellington, page 39
    • Some feel that fan pressure to emphasize Buffy and Spike’s relationship spoiled the last few seasons of Joss Whedon’s show, and many fans were alienated by Teen Wolf’s recent queer-baiting.2013 November 20, Mollie Forman, “Eat the executive”, in Post, Brown University

Forms of queerbaiting

alternative formqueer-baiting
alternative formqueer baiting

Origin of queerbaiting

From queer + baiting.

Questions about queerbaiting

What does queerbaiting mean?
Queerbaiting means the practice of creating homoerotic tension between two characters in a narrative work (particularly a television series) without the intention of ever developing it into an actual same-sex relationship or explicitly addressing the question of either character's sexuality.
What part of speech is queerbaiting?
Queerbaiting is a noun.

Words near queerbaiting in the dictionary

  1. queerbaited
  2. queerbaiter
  3. queerbaiters
  4. queerbaitier
  5. queerbaitiest
  6. queerbaiting
  7. queerbaits
  8. queerbaity
  9. queercoded
  10. queercore
  11. queercrip

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: queerbaiting (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: “queerbaiting.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/queerbaiting. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.