Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state or character of being queer.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The quality or state of being queer.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun the quality of being queer

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a sexual attraction to (or sexual relations with) persons of the same sex
  • noun a strange attitude or habit

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

queer +‎ -ness

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Examples

  • Among those who called for writers to address the issue, Alfred Kazin wrote: "I don't care for novelists who ignore what H.G. Wells himself called the 'queerness' that has come into contemporary life since the bomb."

    Greg Mitchell: Writers and The Bomb: Novel Takes on the Nuclear Age Greg Mitchell 2011

  • Trans*ism, like queerness, is also considered by transphobic/heterosexist society a disease and a stain upon humanity.

    Genetic link to gender identity? 2008

  • If this were about “Castro Books of Queerness”, to argue that this or that work wasn’t utilising queerness, or that it was somehow still a good book for various specific qualities (i.e. despite the queerness) would be to tacitly accept the principle that queerness is morally wrong.

    Bukiet on Brooklyn Books Hal Duncan 2009

  • Thing is, a bit like punk, queerness is an attitude that informs everything I do, rather than something I personally have to express (others like Fausto Fearnos, Yeast Radio and LuckyBitch do those far better than moi anyway!) but it doesn’t mean I’m not a big ol’ queen sometimes and if I’m a fairy fluttering near a microphone you’ll hear it!

    Mom, I’m a queercaster! 2005

  • Yet in such cases the queerness was the very thing that was being condemned, because it proved that, after all, they are even worse than the rest of us.

    Beard 2010

  • First, there is what one might term the queerness of the mental if conceived of as non-physical.

    Dualism Robinson, Howard 2007

  • But I shall say no more at present, as her queerness is the subject of the rest of this story.

    Beatrice Leigh at College A Story for Girls Julia Augusta Schwartz

  • Although not coming out of the closet until after winning second place on American Idol (is two the new one?), he made his "queerness" blatantly clear with his antics and costuming.

    Melody Breyer-Grell: Adam Lambert's Identity Crisis? 2010

  • Although not coming out of the closet until after winning second place on American Idol (is two the new one?), he made his "queerness" blatantly clear with his antics and costuming.

    Melody Breyer-Grell: Adam Lambert's Identity Crisis? Melody Breyer-Grell 2010

  • The doctor made a mental reflection as to the "queerness" of women, with their intuitions and unfounded assertions, without reason or logic to guide them, but before he and Mrs. Forester parted that day he had promised to take steps at once.

    Hunter's Marjory A Story for Girls Margaret Bruce Clarke

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