Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(gay) flamboyant and effeminate; also as adv.

1936		N. Marsh Death in Ecstasy 299: Alleyn may talk queeny, but he’s doped that out.
1943		R. Llewellyn None But the Lonely Heart 29: The blokes was a proper fancy lot [...] shouting and acting about in funny kind of queeny voices. [Ibid.] 216: A lot of posh people all talkin posh, and sort of queeny, in queeny sort of voices.
1952		Arena (N.Z.) xxxi. 2: Up in front would be Slick, the leader [i.e. a sheepdog], stepping along in a queenie way [OED].
1965		G. McInnes Road to Gundagai 265: Thereafter he said he’d rather play football with the other fellows: reading aloud was a bit ‘queeny’.
1979		Maledicta III:2 235: As for queeny speech, that ‘Really,’ [...] aptly illustrates the whoops! tone.
1988		A. Hollinghurst Swimming-Pool Library (1998) 16: Genially queeny occasions where gay chaplains [...] and the more enlightened dons mingled with undergraduates chosen for their charm.
1997		D. Farson Never a Normal Man 129: A group of queeny young men.
1998		R. Scott Rebecca’s Dict. of Queer Sl. 🌐 queeny — flamboyant and effeminate.
1999		Guardian G2 10 Sept. 12: It was a college prank to send the queenier dons Valentine’s cards.
2006		P. Carey Theft 229: Dear little queeny Bruno Bauhaus.
2010		NY Review of Books 14 Oct. 18/3: The codes of his Victorian childhood lay deep in [E.M. Forster] but [...] he could be queeny when he wanted to be.
2012		(con. 1980s) I. Welsh Skagboys 333: A shocked queeny staffer tells me that one lad was taken tae hospital wi his throat cut.
2019		P. Baker Fabulosa 296/2: queeny majestically feminine.
2022		J. Hannaham Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit 187: [T]hey decided they was gonna keep my queeny ass in the SHU from the very start.