queue

«queue» in Mova's school dictionary: a line of people waiting their turn — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (queue, queues); verb (queue, queues, queued, queuing/queueing)

meaning for a pupil

1) A queue is a line of people waiting their turn. tree →

2) To queue is to wait in a line. tree →

3) A queue can also be a list of things waiting, like songs or print jobs. tree →

sense in the lessons

the same as a line: people joining add, people leaving subtract; places are counted from the front; phrases: «in a queue», «queue up», «jump the queue» (push in, unfair)

examples

• There are twenty-nine children in a queue. tree →
• Tom is 8th in the queue. tree →
• 5 more people join the queue. tree →
• We queued for an hour to see the dinosaurs. tree →
• Please queue up quietly for lunch. tree →
• It is rude to jump the queue. tree →
• The queue for the ice cream van was very long. tree →
• Three songs are in the queue to play next. tree →

note

Read it as a line. People joining add to the queue, people leaving subtract. Spelling: queue (the letters «ueue» are silent; it sounds like the letter Q). Mostly British; Americans say «line».

In the corpora

• A waiting list is a queue for a non-urgent operation, and in the NHS the wait can be months.
• You join the end of a queue and wait your turn, because the people at the front waited longest.
• In a queue you keep your hands to yourself and do not push, because pushing can make people fall.
• In the UK people value queuing highly and get upset about queue-jumping.
• Pushing in queues causes falls, spills and burns, especially near stairs, doors and hot food.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «queue» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.