queer / [kweer]
/ kwɪər /

The core meaning is across, athwart, something that cuts against the grain rather than running with it.

While there is a clear history of the word being used in aggressive and insulting ways, the meaning(s) and uses of queer have never been singular, simple or stable.

Originally meaning 'strange' or 'peculiar', queer came to be used pejoratively against LGBTQ people in the late 19th century. From the late 1980s, queer activists began to reclaim the word as a neutral or positive self-description.

Entering the English language in the 16th century, queer originally meant 'strange', 'odd', 'peculiar', or 'eccentric'. It might refer to something suspicious or "not quite right", or to a person with mild derangement or who exhibits socially inappropriate behaviour.

It is likely derived from the Middle Low German queer (oblique/off-center) or German quer (diagonal), rooted in the Proto-Germanic þwerhaz, which relates to "twist" or "turn," similar to the modern English "thwart".

A descendant of the Proto-Indo-European morpheme “*twerk,” which means “to twist, turn, wind, or cut,” and is also likely the root of several other vocabulary staples, including “thwart” and “sarcasm.” “Twerk” led to Old High German’s “twerh,” which means “oblique,” and then to German, where it morphed to “quer” and picked up associations of strangeness and eccentricity. By 1500, it had stretched out to “queer” and could be heard around Scotland.

A competing theory, presented by the well-named word detective William Sayers, says that “queer” comes instead from the morpheme “*keu,” which denotes a bow, arch, or incurvation. “Keu” became the Middle Irish “cúar,” an adjective meaning bent, or a noun denoting a twisted thing (often a catenary, or the curve of a rope that’s been hung at both ends and is pulled down in the center by its own gravity). This became “quair,” or “misaligned,” and finally the Scottish “queer.”