Forms: 5 cu, 5–7 q, 6 qu, que, kue, kewe, 6– cue.
1. The name of the letter Q, q.v.
1755. Johnson, Q … The name of the letter is cue, from queue, French, tail; its form being that of an O with a tail. [An entirely erroneous guess.]
† 2. The sum of half a farthing, formerly denoted in College accounts by the letter q, originally for quadrans. Obs. (Cf. CEE.)
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 106. Cu, halfe a farthynge, or q. calcus … minutum.
c. 1510. Barclay, Mirr. Gd. Manners (1570), B ij. All these … are scantly worth a kue.
1526. Skelton, Magnyf., 36. Not worthe a cue.
1542. Recorde, Gr. Artes (1575), 29. A kewe the viij part of a penny.
1600. Holland, Livy, LV. Epit. 1241. A small peece of silver of three halfepence farthing cue.
1617. Minsheu, Ductor, Cue, halfe a farthing, so called because they set down in the Battling or Butterie Bookes in Oxford and Cambridge the letter q. for halfe a farthing, and in Oxford when they make that Cue or q. a farthing, they say, Cap my q. and make it a farthing thus q.
† b. transf. A term formerly current in the Universities for a certain small quantity of bread; also extended by some writers to beer: cf. CEE.
1603. Patient Grissil (Shaks. Soc.), 9. Eight to a neck of mutton—is not that your commons?—and a cue of bread.
1605. 1st Pt. Jeronimo, in Hazl., Dodsley, IV. 367. Hast thou worn Gowns in the university … ate cues, drunk cees?
1640. Glapthorne, Wit in Constable, I. You’re not now Amongst your cues at Cambridge.
1670. Eachard, Cont. Clergy, 31 (N.). He never drunk above siz-q: of Helicon.
† c. fig. A little, ‘a little bit.’
1654. Gayton, Pleas. Notes, III. x. 141. Cardenio is rais’d a Cue above the Don.
