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Queer street
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Queer street
Queer street is a colloquial term referring to a person being in some difficulty, most commonly financial. It is often associated with Carey Street, where London's bankruptcy courts were once located.
The term appears in 1811 in the Lexicon Balatronicum: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence, an updated version of Francis Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. It is defined therein as:
Although often being associated with the Carey Street bankruptcy courts, which also lends its name to a similar phrase, the term Queer Street appears to predate the courts' move to Carey Street from Westminster in the 1840s.
The folk etymology associating Queer Street and Carey Street has persisted and led to a number of explanations for its supposed origins: that 'queer' may be a corruption of 'Carey' or that it is a transmutation of the German language term Querstrasse (street running off at a right angle), the latter origin being akin to that of the idiom "orthogonal to" in the sense of "conceptually or logically incompatible with."
Charles Dickens wrote a chapter in Our Mutual Friend (1864) called "Lodgers in Queer Street" about a corrupt moneylender plotting to bankrupt his "friends" because they outshine him socially.
In Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter 1, Mr Enfield says: "No, sir. I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask."
In The Great God Pan (1894) by Arthur Machen; Villiers speaking to Austin about his attempt to uncover the original identity of a "Mrs. Beaumont" stated: "If you see mud at the top of a stream, you may be sure that it was once at the bottom. I went to the bottom. I have always been fond of diving into Queer Street for my amusement, and I found my knowledge of that locality and its inhabitants very useful."
In the Sherlock Holmes story "The Second Stain" (1904) by Arthur Conan Doyle, Inspector Lestrade chastises a constable, "It's lucky for you, my man, that nothing is missing, or you would find yourself in Queer Street." In the Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place" and corresponding Granada television series episode, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, episode 3, "Shoscombe Old Place", Watson observes that a character in debt is "by all accounts, so far down Queer Street, he may never find his way back again."
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Queer street AI simulator
(@Queer street_simulator)
Queer street
Queer street is a colloquial term referring to a person being in some difficulty, most commonly financial. It is often associated with Carey Street, where London's bankruptcy courts were once located.
The term appears in 1811 in the Lexicon Balatronicum: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence, an updated version of Francis Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. It is defined therein as:
Although often being associated with the Carey Street bankruptcy courts, which also lends its name to a similar phrase, the term Queer Street appears to predate the courts' move to Carey Street from Westminster in the 1840s.
The folk etymology associating Queer Street and Carey Street has persisted and led to a number of explanations for its supposed origins: that 'queer' may be a corruption of 'Carey' or that it is a transmutation of the German language term Querstrasse (street running off at a right angle), the latter origin being akin to that of the idiom "orthogonal to" in the sense of "conceptually or logically incompatible with."
Charles Dickens wrote a chapter in Our Mutual Friend (1864) called "Lodgers in Queer Street" about a corrupt moneylender plotting to bankrupt his "friends" because they outshine him socially.
In Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson, chapter 1, Mr Enfield says: "No, sir. I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask."
In The Great God Pan (1894) by Arthur Machen; Villiers speaking to Austin about his attempt to uncover the original identity of a "Mrs. Beaumont" stated: "If you see mud at the top of a stream, you may be sure that it was once at the bottom. I went to the bottom. I have always been fond of diving into Queer Street for my amusement, and I found my knowledge of that locality and its inhabitants very useful."
In the Sherlock Holmes story "The Second Stain" (1904) by Arthur Conan Doyle, Inspector Lestrade chastises a constable, "It's lucky for you, my man, that nothing is missing, or you would find yourself in Queer Street." In the Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place" and corresponding Granada television series episode, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, episode 3, "Shoscombe Old Place", Watson observes that a character in debt is "by all accounts, so far down Queer Street, he may never find his way back again."