The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
QUEEN
Definition of QUEEN
noun
The wife, consort, or widow of a king.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From Middle English quene, queen, cwen, from Old English cwēn (“queen”), from Proto-West Germanic *kwāni, from Proto-Germanic *kwēniz (“wife, woman”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷénh₂s (“woman”). Cognate with Scots queen, wheen (“queen”), Old Saxon quān ("wife"; > Middle Low German quene (“elderly woman”)), Dutch kween (“woman past child-bearing age”), Swedish kvinna (“woman”), Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk kvinne (“woman”), Danish kvinde (“woman”), Icelandic kvon (“wife”), Gothic 𐌵𐌴𐌽𐍃 (qēns, “wife”), Norwegian dialectal kvån (“wife”). Related to and possibly merged with and/or absorbed some senses of English quean, from Middle English quene, from Old English cwene (“woman; female serf, quean”), see quean. Generally eclipsed non-native Middle English regina (“queen”), borrowed from Latin rēgīna (“queen”) (see Modern English Regina). Doublet of quean and gyne. In reference to insects, by analogy with the obsolete term king, which it took over from starting in the 1600s, when they were discovered to be female.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
Word DNA
Line of descent
4 recorded generations before English.
Deepest traced root
2nd
of 59 source languages in OUTLIER
14.2%
of traced words share this origin (11,700)
How it is built
Same root, QUEEN · 12 relatives in the game
Its etymology also names Danish, Dutch, Icelandic, Latin, Middle Low German, Norwegian, Scots, Swedish.
Every Proto-Indo-European word → · The Word DNA of OUTLIER →
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
QUEEN in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 16 boards so far. 69 players have found it across Outlier's history.
It first turned up on Day 10, 30 May 2026. The most recent board was Day 164, 31 October 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 2 days.
First found by a player on Day 10, 30 May 2026.
Built from these letters
QUEEN starts with Q and ends with N. Sorted, its letters read EENQU - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. E appears more than once, including a double letter. It uses Q - among the least common letters in written English.
Words that start QUEEN
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Also seen on Day 10
Could you have found QUEEN?
OUTLIER is a daily word game. One grid, the same grid for everybody, and the words nobody else spots are the ones that pay. This word was on Day 10 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER