Cue

How to spell cue

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce cue

What does cue mean?

1. nounA signal, word, or action that prompts someone to do or say something.
2. verbTo give someone a signal to begin an action or speech.
3. nounThe long tapered stick used to strike the ball in billiards, snooker, or pool.

Cue in a sentence

• noun

  The stage manager gave the actor his cue to enter.

• verb

  The director will cue the lighting team at the right moment.

• noun

  He chalked the tip of his cue before the shot.

• noun

  A nod from the chairman was the cue to start the meeting.

• verb

  A flashing light can cue the presenter to wrap up.

• noun

  A warped cue will ruin even a simple pool shot.

Where does cue come from?

Language of origin: French

Cue is a wonderfully murky little word with more than one likely origin. In its theatrical sense, meaning the signal that tells an actor to speak or move, it appears in English from the late 1500s, and the traditional explanation is that it represents the letter 'q', once written into actors' scripts as shorthand. That 'q' is usually said to stand for the Latin quando, meaning 'when', marking the point when a performer should come in, though some scholars treat this as an educated guess rather than a proven fact. The billiards sense, the tapered stick used to strike the ball, comes by a different route: it is an English spelling of the French queue, meaning 'tail', because the cue was originally the narrow tail end of the mace once used in the game. Both meanings settled on the short spelling 'cue', which is exactly why it is so easily confused with its homophone 'queue', the French 'tail' that English kept whole for a line of waiting people.

How the word is built

• cue (a single unanalysable root borrowed whole; not formed from prefix or suffix)

Words that sound like cue

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• queue: A line of people or vehicles waiting their turn for something.