q-word

• Q-word

q-word (plural q-words)

1. Alternative letter-case form of Q-word (“(linguistics) question word”).
   • 1985, The Journal of West African Languages:

     […] was derived through morphological means. This is the situation in languages in which the indefinite marker seems to have been derived from the q-word. In other languages the q-word was morphologically derived from the indefinite word.

   • 2000, Maria Soukka, A descriptive grammar of Noon: a Cangin language of Senegal:

     The q-word questions ask for information about that element only which is replaced by the question word. The position of the q-word is in situ of the element it replaces, except when replacing a subject.

2. The word queer.
   • 2005, Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, Agatha Beins, Women's Studies for the Future: Foundations, Interrogations, Politics, Rutgers University Press, →ISBN, page 97:

     Last semester, I noticed that students in my Introduction to Queer Studies course (Queer Theory/Queer Lives) were just as interested in the b-word (bisexuality) as the q-word (queer). They perked up when I made references to the history of bisexual movements, and by the end of the semester they began to draw interesting connections between "bi" and "queer."

3. (humorous, at a workplace) The word quiet, taken as a bad omen that once uttered the workplace will suddenly become exceptionally busy.
   • 2025, Alice Mah, Red Pockets: A Tale of Inheritance, Ghosts and the Future, Doubleday Canada, →ISBN, page 128:

     Even among Western doctors and surgeons, there is a widely held superstition about the q-word - 'quiet' - which should never be spoken during a hospital shift.

4. Any word beginning with q, especially one that is not normally taboo but is considered (often humorously) to be so in the given context.

• (‘x’-word euphemisms) a-word, b-word, c-word, d-word, e-word, f-word, g-word / G-word, h-word, i-word, j-word, k-word, l-word, m-word, n-word, o-word, p-word, q-word / Q-word, r-word, s-word, t-word, u-word, v-word, w-word, x-word, y-word, z-word; related terms C-bomb, f-bomb, f-slur, L-bomb, n-bomb, Q-slur, r-slur