Meaning of queue in English

queue

noun [ C ]

/kjuː/ us

/kjuː/

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B1 mainly UK

(US usually line)

a line of people, usually standing or in cars, waiting for something, or a lot of people who want something:

Are you in the queue for tickets?

There was a long queue of traffic stretching down the road.

If you want tickets you'll have to join the queue.

disapproving It makes me mad when someone jumps the queue (= goes straight to the front).

There's a queue of companies wanting to sell the product.

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computing, internet & telecoms specialized

a series of pieces of data, files to be printed, calls, etc. that are waiting to be dealt with by a computer, telephone system, etc.:

I turned the printer off and cleared the print queue.

If the printer queue is blocked, a user can clear their own documents from the queue, but not anybody else's.

With the new system, the calls will stack up in a queue, rather than callers being forced to call back because they keep getting a busy signal.

More examplesFewer examples

Form an orderly queue.
There was a queue of people waiting patiently for the bus to arrive.
When the doors opened she barged her way to the front of the queue.
I was waiting in the bus queue when two men pushed in in front of me.
She was at the head of the queue but I was at the tail end.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Things collected in lines or rings

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Computer concepts

Communications - general words

queue

verb [ I ]

mainly UK

/kjuː/ us

/kjuː/

(UK also queue up); (US usually line, line up)

B2 [ I ]

to wait in a line of people, often to buy something:

Dozens of people were queueing up to get tickets.

We had to queue for three hours to get in.

[ I ]

to want very much to do something:

[ + to infinitive ] There are thousands of young women queueing up to be models.

It is one of several big German companies queueing for a listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

[ T ] computing, internet & telecoms specialized

to arrange pieces of data, files to be printed, calls, etc. in a series so they can be dealt with one after the other by a computer, telephone system, etc.:

If more than the maximum number of print jobs are submitted at the same time, the software queues the excess jobs.

During peak periods calls can be queued rather than callers hearing a busy tone.

More examplesFewer examples

We queued for half an hour waiting for a free space in the car park.
He queued for two hours and all for nothing - there were no seats left.
Queue here for signed copies of his book.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Waiting

See more results »

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Wanting things

Computer concepts

Communications - general words

(Definition of queue from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

queue | American Dictionary

queue

noun [ C ]

esp. Br

/kju/

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a line of people or things waiting for something:

There was a long queue for tickets at the theater.

queue

verb [ I ] us

/kju/

Fans queued up to buy tickets.

(Definition of queue from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

queue | Business English

queue

noun [ C ]

/kjuː/ us

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(US line)

a line of people who are waiting for something:

There was a huge queue of people stretching down the road from the bank.

(US line)

a number of people who want to do or have something:

Rarely does a company that is suffering from such mismanagement attract a queue of eager buyers.

She would not be a preferential creditor and would have to join the queue of other creditors.

be at the front/back of the queue It's public-sector workers who are always at the back of the queue when pay rises are being handed out.

be the first/last in the queue Fortunately, they were first in the queue of creditors.

a list of jobs that a computer has to do:

a print queue

COMMUNICATIONS UK

a number of people who are waiting to speak to someone on the phone:

Please hold, you are in a queue and your call will be answered as soon as possible.

See also

dole queue

queue

verb

/kjuː/ us

(US stand in line); (also UK queue up)

[ I ]

to join a line of people who are waiting for something:

Private investors would regularly queue outside their banks in order to rush their application forms in before the deadline.

[ I ]

to join a number of people who are waiting for or to do something:

Competitors queue up to steal clients and key employees.

[ T ] IT

to arrange tasks in order:

The server will not allow me to queue print jobs.

(Definition of queue from the Cambridge Business English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of queue

queue

This removes the need for having separate queues for events and input conditions during behavioral model implementation.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The study of such a model provides insights at the queue length (and thus the congestion of a junction) under a heavy load.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

But still, and as long as they remain in the queue for paid performances, they are professionals.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The speed of the total process requires a large number of par ts to be queued between stages.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Such a queue can be easily implemented as a circular array of task pointers.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

This study was performed to find out about the queue discipline in waiting lists for elective surgery to reveal potential discrepancies in waiting list management.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The queue is used in order to process the states in ascending distance from the starting state.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Customers in queue 1 have priority over customers in queue 2 in the sense that servers are handling customers belonging to queue 1 first.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

It is our responsibility as the caller to queue it for visitation, so that the function may assume it safe to return to.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Also, the presence of infection can very rapidly endanger the lives of those waiting faithfully in the queue for their treatment.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

Since this is not a desirable behaviour, we will enhance our simple processor with a waiting queue for tasks.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

With food rationing at the time of this survey, the difficulties of older people in food queues warranted a separate section in his report.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

However, it is essential for our purposes to estimate such variances because they critically affect system behavior, queuing delays, and variances in downstream links.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

With increasing task granularity and growing processor counts, the central task queue is likely to become a performance bottleneck.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

The authors show that, in general, when waiting in the queue is costly, the equilibrium behavior is not of the threshold type.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

See all examples of queue

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

What is the pronunciation of queue?

Translations of queue

in Chinese (Traditional)

（人或車排成的）隊，隊伍，行列, 排隊, 排隊（等候）做…，非常想做……

Meaning of queue in English

queue | American Dictionary

queue

queue | Business English

Examples of queue

Translations of queue

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