Noun: quean
| Singular | quean |
| Plural | queans |
Sample Sentences
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Rahab, that harlot, began to be a professed quean at ten years of age […] [1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition III, section 2, member 1, subsection ii:]
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However, terrible as it may seem to the tall maiden sisters of J.P.’s in Queen Anne houses with walled vegetable gardens, this courtesan, strumpet, harlot, whore, punk, fille de joie, street-walker, this trollop, this trull, this baggage, this hussy, this drab, skit, rig, quean, mopsy, demirep, demimondaine, this wanton, this fornicatress, this doxy, this concubine, this frail sister, this poor Queenie—did actually solicit me, did actually say ‘coming home to-night, dearie’ and my soul was not blasted enough to call a policeman. [1936, Anthony Bertram, Like the Phoenix:]
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So ended Lauretta her song, to which all hearkened attentively, though not all interpreted it alike. Some were inclined to give it a moral after the Milanese fashion, to wit, that a good porker was better than a pretty quean. [1921, original c. 1353, first English translation 1620, Giovanni Boccaccio, translated by J.M. Rigg, The Decameron, page 307:]
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Forbye the two queans there was the son, John Gordon, as coarse a devil as you’d meet, he’d already had two–three queans in trouble and him but barely eighteen years old. [1932, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song (A Scots Quair), Polygon, published 2006, page 30:]
Nouns inflected like quean
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. From Middle English quene (“young, robust woman”), from Old English cwene (“woman, female serf”), from Proto-West Germanic *kwenā, from Proto-Germanic *kwenǭ (“woman”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷḗn (“woman”). Doublet of gyne and queen.
2. Cognate with Dutch kween (“a barren woman, a barren cow”), Low German quene (“barren cow, heifer”), German Kone (“wife”), Swedish kvinna (“woman”), Icelandic kona (“woman”), Gothic 𐌵𐌹𐌽𐍉 (qinō, “woman”), 𐌵𐌴𐌽𐍃 (qēns, “wife”). See: Middle English Nouns '
quene', Old English Nouns '
cwene', Dutch Nouns '
kween', German Nouns '
Kone', Swedish Nouns '
kvinna', Icelandic Nouns '
kona', Gothic Nouns '
𐌵𐌹𐌽𐍉'.
Verbs referencing "quean"
Swedish Nouns
kona, Dutch Nouns
kween.