Queue is a peculiar word. It appears as though someone haphazardly added a string of unnecessary vowels after the consonant, and it often sparks curiosity. Since its introduction to the English language in the 1470s, the word has taken on various meanings: it could denote a strip of parchment, a row of dancers, a braid of hair, the extended end of a string instrument, a barrel, a lower part of a lance, or the tail of an animal in heraldry. All of these definitions revolve around the concept of length, with the latter being the closest to its origins in Old French coe or cue, signifying “tail” (or, informally, “penis”). This stems from Vulgar Latin coda, which is also the root of the English term coda. Derived from Latin cauda, meaning “tail”, and tracing back to Proto-Italic kauda and Proto-Indo-European khu, meaning “cleaved”.
