queer — OET · Shobdo

queer

adjective

1 it seemed queer to see the windows all dark:

odd, strange, unusual, funny, peculiar, curious, bizarre, weird, outlandish, eccentric, unconventional, unorthodox, uncanny, unexpected, unfamiliar, abnormal, anomalous, atypical, untypical, different, out of the ordinary, out of the way, extraordinary, remarkable, puzzling, mystifying, mysterious, perplexing, baffling, unaccountable, incongruous, uncommon, irregular, outré, offbeat, singular, deviant, aberrant, freak, freakish;

suspicious, dubious, questionable;

eerie, unnatural;

Scottish unco;

informal fishy, creepy, spooky, freaky;

British, informal rum;

North American, informal off the wall;

bizarro.

▷antonyms ordinary, conventional, normal.

2 there's something queer going on up there:

suspicious, suspect, irregular, questionable, dubious, doubtful, funny, mysterious, murky, dark, criminal, dishonest, corrupt, nefarious, crafty, deceitful, shifty, underhand, dishonourable, unscrupulous, unprincipled, fraudulent, illegal, unlawful;

informal fishy, shady, bent.

3 the film draws upon her experience as a queer woman:

gay, homosexual, lesbian, lesbigay;

LGBT, LGBTQ, GLBT;

rare homophile, Uranian.

▷antonyms heterosexual, straight.

4 British, informal , dated you just feel queer because you're packed full of drugs:

ill, unwell, poorly, bad, out of sorts, indisposed, not oneself, sick, queasy, nauseous, nauseated, peaky, liverish, green around the gills, run down, washed out, faint, dizzy, giddy;

British off, off colour;

informal under the weather, below par, not up to par, funny, peculiar, rough, lousy, rotten, awful, terrible, dreadful;

British, informal grotty, ropy;

Scottish, informal wabbit, peely-wally;

Australian, New Zealand, informal crook;

vulgar slang crappy;

dated seedy;

rare peaked, peakish.

▷antonyms well.

□ queer fishBritish, informal

they have invariably chosen the queer fish in preference to the more or less recognisable member of the human race:

eccentric, oddity, odd fellow, unorthodox person, character, individualist, individual, free spirit, misfit;

informal oddball, weirdo, weirdie, freak, nut, nutcase, case, head case, crank, crackpot, loony, loon;

British, informal one-off, odd bod, nutter;

North American, informal wacko, wack, screwball, kook;

Australian, New Zealand, informal dingbat.

□ in queer streetBritish, informal

if it wasn't for my pension I'd be in queer street:

impoverished, poor, penniless, penurious, in penury, indigent, insolvent, impecunious, moneyless, hard up, poverty-stricken, needy, in need, in want, destitute;

poor as a church mouse, without a sou, in straitened circumstances, on one's beam ends, unable to make ends meet;

British on the breadline, without a penny (to one's name);

informal broke, flat broke, strapped for cash, cleaned out, strapped, on one's uppers, without two pennies/brass farthings to rub together;

British, informal skint, boracic, stony broke;

North American, informal stone broke;

rare pauperized, beggared.

verb informal , dated

trying to crash the party would probably queer the whole deal:

spoil, damage, impair, harm, be detrimental to, mar, wreck, destroy, devastate, smash, shatter, scupper, scotch, disrupt, undo, thwart, hinder, foil, ruin, blight, injure, cripple, hurt, jeopardize, endanger, imperil, threaten, put at risk, undermine, prejudice, be prejudicial to, be disadvantageous to, play havoc with, be deleterious to, compromise;

informal botch, blow, put the kibosh on.

queer Oxford Dictionary of English