Queen1, n.
n. [O. Eng. quene, A-S. cwēn, wife, queen, Icel. qvān, qvon, woman, wife. See QUEAN.]
- The consort of a king.
- A woman who is the sovereign of a kingdom; a female monarch; as, Elizabeth, queen of England; Mary, queen of Scotland.
- The sovereign of a swarm of bees, or the female of the hive; — called also queen-bee.
- (Chess.) The most powerful, and after the king the most important, piece in a set of chessmen.
- A card bearing the picture of a queen; as, the queen of hearts.
Queen-consort, the wife of a reigning king. Blackstone. — Queen-dowager, the widow of a king. — Queen-mother, a queen-dowager who is also mother of the reigning king or queen. — Queen of May, May-queen. See MAY-QUEEN. — Queen of the meadows (Bot.), meadow-sweet; a plant of the genus Spiraea. — Queen-regent, or queen-regnant, a queen reigning in her own right. — Queen’s bench, a court of record in England, which is so called during the life of a queen. — Queen’s counsel, barristers who have been called within the bar, and selected to be counsel for the queen. — Queen’s evidence (Eng. Law), the accomplice in a crime who is admitted for the crown against his accomplices. — Queen’s metal, an alloy imitating silver, composed of nine parts of tin and one part each of lead, antimony, and bismuth. Craig. — Queen’s pigeon (Ornith.), a magnificent bird found in many of the islands of the Indian Ocean, remarkable for having upon its head a beautiful tuft of feathers, which have a spoon-shaped extremity of a blue color, bordered with white; Goura Victoria. Baird. — Queen’s yellow, the yellow subsulphate of mercury; — formerly so called. Ure.
