Definition
An archaic legal term applied to a woman of disreputable character, typically meaning a prostitute or woman of loose morals. The term appears primarily in historical slander and defamation contexts, where calling a woman a "quean" was among the actionable words imputing sexual immorality or unworthiness of character.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A woman, now especially an impudent or disreputable woman; a prostitute. Also: a young woman or girl; a daughter.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A woman; a young or unmarried woman; a girl (obsolete or Scottish, as in Chaucer). Also: a low woman; a wench; a slut.
The common and legal meanings converge closely, but the gap that matters for research is one of precision: in ordinary speech, "quean" ranged from a neutral term for a young woman (Chaucer's usage) to a severe imputation of sexual immorality. The legal meaning fixed on the derogatory end of that spectrum, because defamation law was only engaged when the word was used injuriously. A researcher reading a legal source should not import the neutral Scottish or Chaucerian sense — in legal contexts, the word was understood as an accusation, not a description.
Common Confusion
QUEAN / QUEEN: The near-identical pronunciation creates both transcription hazards in historical documents and occasional interpretive confusion. The two words have entirely different meanings and different legal significance. A document referencing "the queen" in a legal or formal context almost certainly means the sovereign; "quean" appearing in pleadings, depositions, or reported slander cases refers to the term of opprobrium discussed here. Researchers working from manuscript sources, early printed reports, or OCR-processed texts should verify spelling before drawing any interpretive conclusions.
Why It Matters in Research
QUEAN is a term researchers will encounter almost exclusively in historical sources — English common law pleadings, slander cases, and abridgments from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Its importance in the corpus is diagnostic rather than substantive: the word's presence signals that a case or document involves spoken defamation of a woman, likely on grounds of sexual character.
Two research traps are significant. First, QUEAN is nearly homophonous with QUEEN and was occasionally confused in transcription and early print, meaning corrupted texts may substitute one for the other. A researcher reading a defamation case involving royalty should verify the original spelling. Second, the term bridges the common-law doctrine of actionable words — a technical area where certain spoken imputations were actionable per se without proof of special damages. Understanding whether "quean" was treated as actionable per se in a given jurisdiction and era is essential to reading older slander cases correctly.
Bouvier's note that the word's meaning "is not well ascertained" is itself legally significant. Uncertainty over the precise meaning of a spoken word was a live issue in slander pleading: if a defendant could argue the word bore an innocent construction, liability might not attach. Researchers consulting 2 Rolle, Abr. 296 or Bacon's Abridgment under Slander (U 3) — the sources Bouvier cites — will find the doctrinal treatment of ambiguous opprobrious words, of which QUEAN is an example.
The term is obsolete in modern legal usage. No researcher should expect to encounter it in primary sources after the mid-nineteenth century, and its appearance in American sources is sparse even in the colonial and early republic periods, where English slander precedents were selectively adopted.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three historical sources — Black's (both editions) and Bouvier — agree on the core definition: a worthless woman, a strumpet. All three flag the term as obsolete or near-obsolete. This unanimity across the major nineteenth-century American legal dictionaries confirms that QUEAN had already passed out of active legal use by the time those works were compiled, surviving only as a term requiring definition for readers encountering it in older authorities.
Bouvier adds the most substantive gloss, noting the meaning "is said not to be well ascertained" — a hedge that reflects genuine common-law uncertainty about whether the word was sufficiently definite to support a slander action. This is not a trivial point: the treatise sources Bouvier cites (Rolle's Abridgment and Bacon's Abridgment) address the doctrine of actionable words, and QUEAN appears in that literature as a contested case. Black's entries, by contrast, offer no doctrinal context — they function purely as vocabulary glosses for obsolete terminology.
What the historical dictionaries collectively omit is any discussion of the word's trajectory from neutral to pejorative, or of the interpretive problem that trajectory created in pleading. Researchers needing that history must go to the primary sources Bouvier identifies rather than to the dictionary shelf.
Jurisdictional Note
QUEAN as a legal term is effectively confined to English common law and its direct derivatives. American adoption of English slander doctrine was uneven, and the specific treatment of archaic actionable words like "quean" varied by state. Researchers working in American jurisdictions should not assume English precedents on this word were followed without checking local authority.