Queued

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /kjuːd/

Definitions

1. Arranged in a sequence awaiting attention or processing
2. Set in order to wait for a turn or to be handled
3. Organized into a line or list to be dealt with in sequence

Etymology: The verb "queued" is simply the past tense of "queue", which in its noun sense once meant nothing more than an animal's tail. Its ancestor is Latin "cauda", which passed through Vulgar Latin "cōda" into Old French as "cue" or "coe", and reached Middle English as "queue" with the sense of a tail or the rear part of something. The word is a doublet of "coda" and "cola", meaning that all three descend from the same Latin source but entered English by different routes, one of which gave us the musical term for a closing passage. The leap from animal tail to a line of people waiting their turn was a later development in English, and the "tail" idea still hangs on in the notion of a rear end that forms at the back of something. The verb form, which describes joining that rear end and standing in it, is a much more recent extension of the noun.

Synonyms: lined up, waiting, in line

Antonyms: unqueued