queue

Imagine a line of people waiting their turn at a shop, a theatre, or a bus stop: that is a queue. The word can also describe a line of things waiting to be dealt with in order. On a computer, for example, jobs may sit in a queue until the system handles them one by one. The idea is simple: first come, first served. The word comes from French, where it originally meant "tail," which fits the image of one thing following another.

A queue is an ordered line of people, items, or tasks waiting to be dealt with in a set order. Most people first think of a physical line, such as people waiting at a ticket office, in a supermarket, or outside a venue. In British English, this is a very common everyday use of the word.

But the idea goes beyond people standing in line. In computing, a queue is a common way to manage work: print jobs wait in a printer queue, messages wait to be sent, and systems process requests in the order they arrive. This is the same basic idea as "first come, first served."

The word can also refer to a line or list of things waiting in order more generally, even when there is no visible line. You might talk about customers in an online queue for tickets or a queue of tasks waiting to run in a program.

There is also a less common meaning: a queue can be a long braid of hair hanging down at the back. This sense appears in history books, older writing, and discussions of hairstyles from earlier times.

So whether you are waiting for coffee, watching requests build up on a server, or reading about an old hairstyle, the word always carries the same core idea: a line, usually with one thing following another in order.