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/kwiːn/ · noun
(archaic) A woman, now especially an impudent or disreputable woman; a prostitute..
Rahab, that harlot, began to be a professed quean at ten years of age […]
However, terrible as it may seem to the tall maiden sisters of J.P.’s in Queen Anne houses with walled vegetable gardens, this courtesan, strumpet, harlot, whore, punk, fille de joie, street-walker, this trollop, this trull, this baggage, this hussy, this drab, skit, rig, quean, mopsy, demirep, demimondaine, this wanton, this fornicatress, this doxy, this concubine, this frail sister, this poor Queenie—did actually solicit me, did actually say ‘coming home to-night, dearie’ and my soul was not blasted enough to call a policeman.
So ended Lauretta her song, to which all hearkened attentively, though not all interpreted it alike. Some were inclined to give it a moral after the Milanese fashion, to wit, that a good porker was better than a pretty quean.
Forbye the two queans there was the son, John Gordon, as coarse a devil as you’d meet, he’d already had two–three queans in trouble and him but barely eighteen years old.
Use quean when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.
Quean means (archaic) A woman, now especially an impudent or disreputable woman; a prostitute..
The closest synonym depends on the sentence and intended sense.
The opposite depends on the specific sense.
Rahab, that harlot, began to be a professed quean at ten years of age […]
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