queer ken
Appearance
English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From queer (“weird; odd”) + ken (“house”).
Noun
[edit]queer ken (plural queer kens)
- (dated, UK, thieves' cant and Polari) A prison.
- 2015 October 12, Adam Lowe, “Poem of the week: Vada That”, in The Guardian[1]:
- Fact is, / she’ll end up in the charpering carsey / of Jennifer Justice. What is this / queer ken she’s in?
- For more quotations using this term, see Citations:queer ken.
Synonyms
[edit]- See Thesaurus:prison
Derived terms
[edit]- queer-ken hall (“prison”)
References
[edit]- [Francis Grose] (1788) “Queer ken”, in A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 2nd edition, London: […] S. Hooper, […], →OCLC.
- John S[tephen] Farmer; W[illiam] E[rnest] Henley, compilers (1902) “queer ken”, in Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present. […], volume V, [London: […] Harrison and Sons] […], →OCLC, page 345.
- Baker, Paul (2004) Fantabulosa: A Dictionary of Polari and Gay Slang, Bloomsbury, →ISBN, page 49