queer ken

English

Alternative forms

quier ken, quire ken, quyer ken

Etymology

From queer (“weird; odd”) + ken (“house”).

Noun

queer ken (plural queer kens)

(dated, Britain, thieves' cant and Polari) A prison.
- 2015 October 12, Lowe, Adam, “Poem of the week: Vada That”, in The Guardian‎:
  Fact is, / she’ll end up in the charpering carsey / of Jennifer Justice. What is this / queer ken she’s in?
- For more examples of usage of this term, see Citations:queer ken.

Synonyms

See Thesaurus:prison

Derived terms

queer-ken hall (“prison”)

References

Grose, Francis (1788) A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue‎, 2nd edition, London: S. Hooper
Farmer, John Stephen (1902) Slang and Its Analogues‎, volume 5, pages 345
Baker, Paul (2004) Fantabulosa: A Dictionary of Polari and Gay Slang, Bloomsbury, →ISBN, page 49

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