queue
UK[kjuː]US[kjuː]
n
A line of people, vehicles, etc. waiting for something.
v
To wait in a line of people, vehicles, etc.
v
To arrange data or tasks so they are dealt with in a particular order.
Etymology
The word 'queue' entered English in the late 15th century from the French word 'queue', meaning 'tail'. The French term itself derives from the Latin 'cauda', also meaning 'tail'. The semantic evolution from 'tail' to 'a line of people' is a vivid metaphorical shift, picturing a line as the elongated, trailing appendage of a group. This usage, solidifying in the 19th century, reflects the visual similarity between a line and an animal's tail. The computing sense, meaning a list of items processed in sequence, emerged in the mid-20th century, extending the 'line' metaphor into the digital realm.
Analysis
The entire word 'queue' is a simplex loanword from French. It cannot be meaningfully segmented into productive morphemes in modern English.
Examples
There was a long queue outside the cinema for the premiere.
We had to queue for over an hour to get tickets.
The printer software manages a queue of documents waiting to be printed.