Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to quiz or ridicule, to puzzle.

1788		Morris et al. ‘Knowing Joe’ Festival of Anacreon (1810) 51: No boy of my age could talk louder, / Crack a joke, tip the wink, or a droll story tell, / Of my cleverness none were prouder: / So thinks I it’s better not following plow, / To try with these youths to queer low folk.
a.1790		C. Dibdin ‘The Waggoner’ Collection of Songs II 182: Your natty sparks and flashy dames / How I do love to queer, / I runs my rigs, / And patters, and gigs, / And plays a hundred comical games.
1795		Sporting Mag. Dec. VII 163/1: A sheepish flat I can queer and bam.
1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (3rd edn) n.p.: To Queer. To puzzle or confound. I have queered the old full bottom; i.e. I have puzzled the judge.
1799		Sporting Mag. Jan. XIII 233/2: For Tom was a wit [...] / And he’d queer the old putt, for his long-winded grace.
1800		G. Colman Yngr Heir at Law II ii: Pish, now you be queering a body.
c.1805		‘The Rage’ Jovial Songster 19: Be’t to bam, or to hoax, or to queer, or to quis, / Or howe’er in the ton you are flashing.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1796].
1818		W. Scott Heart of Mid-Lothian (1883) 272: Come now Jeanie, ye are but queering us.
1821		‘An Amateur’ Real Life in London I 67: Queering the clergyman at his father’s table.
1826		‘Nocturnal Sports’ in Universal Songster II 180/2: The beak [...] queered us vith his law-grammar, haxing hus demmed cramp questions ve couldn’t hunderstand.
1832		J. Miller Complete Jest Book 262: He had gloriously queered old full-bottom.
1841		‘The Four & Ninepenny Hat’ Dublin Comic Songster 102: But of all the wonders of the day, / That queer each sage and flat [...] Is the four and ninepenny hat, sirs.
c.1850		Peeping Tom (London) 38 149/1: [In] Young Hellfinches own words, he queer’s old full-bottom and got off.
1856		C. Reade It Is Never Too Late to Mend II 245: You may bully him and queer him till all is blue, and he won’t budge.
1876		C. Hindley Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack 111: He had a way of getting out of the dilemma by what he called ‘queering his opponent’.
1977		S. Kernochan Dry Hustle 12: She paused, waiting for my eyes to stop queering.

2. to impose on, to swindle, to cheat; thus queer a flat, to hoodwink a gullible victim.

1781		G. Parker View of Society II 128: The man commences the practice of the art of Queering the woman who takes money.
1797		M. Robinson Walsingham IV 277: Fine news! – I’m dished – done up. The sharps have queered me.
1819		‘The Young Prig’ in Farmer Musa Pedestris (1896) 83: There no queering fate, sirs .
1823		Byron Don Juan canto XI line 147: Who in a row like Tom could lead the van, [...] Who queer a flat? Who (spite of Bow-street’s ban) On the high-toby-spice so flash the muzzle?
c.1830		‘Smith’s Frolic’ in Holloway & Black II (1979) 62: Then up a dark alley I went with my whore / Ma’am thought of my bit for to queer me was sure.
c.1835		‘Life of a Vagabond’ in Holloway & Black II (1979) 64: Hocussing cocknies, queering flats.
1838		W.N. Glascock Land Sharks and Sea Gulls II 4: You’re a good un, Timmins at queering the flats.
1843		W.T. Moncrieff Scamps of London II iii: I’ll queer them yet.
1857		in Punch ‘Dear Bill, This Stone-Jug’ 31 Jan. n.p.: In the dayrooms the cuffins we queers at our ease, / And at Darkmans we run the rig just as we please.
1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. (2nd edn) 196: ‘To queer a flat,’ to puzzle or confound a ‘gull’ or silly fellow.
1867		Swindon Advertiser 11 Nov. 4/1: I taught ’em [...] how to slip out of one’s skin, and another slip in [...] And, if copped, to queer the jug by making up a mug.
1878		‘’Arry on Himself’ Punch 21 Dec. in P. Marks (2006) 6: But you’ll only queer flats in that fashion, the sharp sort is bound to be fly.
1882		Sydney Sl. Dict. (2 edn) 7: To ‘queer’ a flat, to puzzle or confound a gull.
1890		Sporting Times 3 May 3/1: But it was rough on Curtis to queer him at the most critical moment.
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. [as 1882].
1904		Marvel 12 Nov. 6: Don’t you queer the biz, where’s the jooils, Foxy?
1934		(con. 1920s) J.T. Farrell Young Manhood in Studs Lonigan (1936) 411: I had a job [...] all fixed up a couple of years ago. And that louse queered it thinking he could get it.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 187: queer a flat To swindle; to cheat; to defraud.

3. to spoil, to put out of order.

a.1790		C. Dibdin ‘The Waggoner’ Collection of Songs II 183: Ball plunges, and paints him all over with mud, / Queers his stockings, and spoils the beau!
1812		Vaux Vocab. of the Flash Lang.
1818		W. Perry London Guide 142: This mode is not taunting the distress of others: it is nothing more or less, than queering the attempt of a bold beggar to impose upon your softness.
1820		Commercial Advertiser (N.Y.) 19 May 2/5: Our readers are not used to such scientific expressions as — ‘close-enough-in’ — ‘giving a rattler on the chest’ — ‘hit well left and right, and one of his peepers queered’ — ‘giving a hit which crimsoned well,’ &c. &c.
1824		Pierce Egan’s Life in London 7 Nov. 324/3: And dominos chattered, and peepers were queer’d ; / Hard nobbers, and jobbers, and claret galore, Sir.
1830		Lytton Paul Clifford I 130: Queer my glims, if that be n’t little Paul!
1846		Swell’s Night Guide 64: He [...] split upon him, when he crack’d a crib. / And had him pinch’d; and quodded, too [...] Swore – he, the deed had stagg’d. So queer’d Bill’s council, and got Billy lagged.
1866		H.L. Williams Gay Life in N.Y. 88: A noted pugilist who ‘queered the ogles’.
1876		C. Hindley Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack 218: The disease – consumption – ‘was queering him’.
1889		Referee 26 May n.p.: Why should not our non-professor’s little game be queered? [F&H].
1890		Sporting Times 18 Jan. 1: She unexpectedly queered him by saying—‘Well, at any rate, the flea you complained of this morning was caught off me’.
1895		S.F. Chron. 6 June 11/5: De lampers stood ’round till dey got wise to de joint, an’ dey didn’t do a t’ing but queer me marks.
1900		G.R. Sims In London’s Heart 84: If he was to come in while we was on the premises it might queer the thing altogether.
1910		Truth (Perth) 1 Oct. 4/7: If he’s badly ‘narked’ at that, / You may know, / That the ‘bally koshermen / Queered the show’ .
1917		F. Packard Adventures of Jimmie Dale (1918) 17: He could always ‘queer’ a game in some specious manner, if he were pushed too far.
1920		F.S. Fitzgerald This Side of Paradise in Bodley Head Scott Fitzgerald III (1960) 241: Food is what queered the party.
1930		R. Whitfield Green Ice (1988) 41: That queered the suicide gag.
1940		R. Chandler Farewell, My Lovely (1949) 238: That queered it.
1952		(con. 1948) G. Mandel Flee the Angry Strangers 45: I don’t want no Dills Hotel whore queerin the joint fer all the respec’bul faces.
1961		M. Braly Felony Tank (1962) 66: Might as well get it over with [...] before this little jerk wakes up and queers the whole deal.
1974		G.F. Newman You Flash Bastard 34: An empty shop two doors along. If they queer the jeweller’s security system, then go in through the basement.
1999		(con. 1921) R. Doyle A Star Called Henry (2000) 313: She’s queering things for the rest of us.
2004		‘Animated Dominoes, Dice’ at Old and Sold 🌐 Any professional crap shooter’s game was queered if the quicksilver expanded and fell out [of crooked dice].
2023		(con. 1962) J. Ellroy Enchanters 31: You chose the wrong one, and it queered your relationship.

4. to act in an odd manner.

1826		R. Morley ‘Flashey Joe’ in Farmer Musa Pedestris (1896) 96: Vhy, then you swore you would he kind / But you have queer’d so much of late.
1978		R. Price Ladies’ Man (1985) 4: My stomach queered and I couldn’t do another sit-up.

5. (UK und.) to rob.

1840

Flash Mirror 6: Queering of a Duff Shop. — Going into an eating house, calling for a go of soup, prigging the knives and forks, pocketing the saltcellars [and] seizing a roll of duff, and paddling off scot-free.

6. (UK Und.) to pose as.

1847

G.M.W. Reynolds Mysteries of London III 66/1: His jomen [sic] Mutton-Face Sal, with her moll-sack queering a raclan, stalled.

7. of a person, to spoil the reputation of, to spoil someone’s efforts or opportunities.

1861		Melbourne Punch ‘The Lay of the Lags’ 14 Mar. 1/1: Then when all the bobbies blewed are, / We can buz and rim a billy, / None to pall the trick and queer us, / Sending us to stun on skilly.
1885		‘’Arry [...] at the Grosvenor Gallery’ Punch 10 Jan. 24/2: Give yer my davy it queers / A snide ’un to trot round these rooms.
1893		S. Crane Maggie, a Girl of the Streets (2001) 47: Well, look-a-here, dis t’ing queers us! See? We’re queered!
1900		Flynt & Walton Powers That Prey 21: See all the trouble he’s givin’ us. He’ll queer the whole of us if we don’t get him.
1910		O. Johnson Varmint 88: I’m disgraced [...] It’s all over – all over. I’m queered – queered forever!
1914		S. Lewis Our Mr Wrenn (1936) 231: Good Lord, suppose Istra ‘queered’ him at Mrs. Arty’s!
1925		Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer 191: If there’s one thing that’ll queer you in this town it’s this labor stuff.
1930		E. Glyn Flirt and Flapper 81: Flapper: He had returned to see me — but Lollie’s queered him again — and he’s going to Mexico.
1937		W.M. Raine Cool Customer 285: He doesn’t know enough about my game to queer it.
1940		D. Maurer Big Con 147: You can [...] see that no one gets to him to queer the deal.
1953		F. Paley Rumble on the Docks (1955) 189: Imagine this little bitch trying to queer her deal with Brindo!
1965		S. Yurick Warriors (1966) 21: Look at that; he queering you with a look.
1970		E. Thompson Garden of Sand (1981) 431: She tried to talk to Jacky with her eyes, warning him not to queer the setup.
2002		D.H. Sterry Chicken (2003) 32: It’s my theory that she really wants to be with a woman, but I’m not about to tell her that. Don’t want to queer a good thing.

8. (US) to cause trouble for.

1913–14

Van Loan ‘The Revenge of Kid Morales’ in Taking the Count 284: Smith never lets up on a fellow that dogs it [...] He’ll queer you and chase you out of the business.

9. to sexually abuse.

1958		W. Talsman Gaudy Image (1966) 40: ‘I thought so! [...] Been here a week and queered every guy on the place.’ She swung her broom madly.
1963		in T.I. Rubin Sweet Daddy 118: They go getting a hard on for you and trying to queer you.
1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 88: anal intercourse [...] queer a person (hetero sl).
1994		F. Mac Anna Ship Inspector 85: Conker had had to stuff his own hands into his pockets to stop The Barrel feeling him up. ‘He tried to queer me,’ Conker said. ‘I think we should at least tell the newspapers.’.

10. to highlight the homosexual aspects of a given form of creativity, e.g. painting.

2017

Guardian Online 6 Feb. 🌐 At the beginning [Hockney’s] art was a queering of British abstraction [...] a ticker tape of toilet graffiti, cottaging and sex in the shower.