Also 7 queree, quæree, 7–8 query. [Anglicizing of quere, QUÆRE.]
1. Introducing a question: = QUÆRE 1.
Now rarely written in full, being usually expressed by the abbreviation qy. (qr., qu.) or the sign ?.
1667. Pepys, Diary, 23 Aug. Query, whether a glass-coach would have permitted us to have made the escape?
1732. Swift, Corr. (1766), II. 690. That … the subscription be … paid into the hands of (query, Mr. Thorn,… a very proper person?).
1763. Hoyle, Back-gammon, 200. Query, Whether the Probability is for his gammoning me, or not?
1888. N. & Q., 7th Ser. V. 185/2. It was afterwards repurchased by that monarch (but query if purchase money was ever paid).
2. A question. = QUÆRE 2.
α. 1645. R. Symonds, Diary (Camden), 270. The cowardly commissioners … put queries. Where shall we have winter quarters?
1658. J. Durham, Exp. Revelation (1680), VII. 342. This is the scope of the Queree.
1692. Bentley, Boyle Lect., vi. (1735), 203. We are now enabled to give Answers to some bold Queries and Objections of Atheists.
1767. A. Young, Farmer’s Lett. to People, 270. It may … admit of a query, Whether the above expences are not too great for the crops to repay?
1813. Scott, Rokeby, I. x. [He] forced the embarrass’d host to buy, By query close, direct reply.
1866. Geo. Eliot, F. Holt (1868), 22. She had prepared herself … to suppress all … queries which her son might resent.
β. a. 1635. Corbet, Poems (1807), 63. He that is guilty of no quæry here, Out-lasts his epitaph, out-lives his heir.
1648. Jenkyn, Blind Guide, iv. 96. My first quæree, is whether grace be an adjutory.
1684. T. Burnet, Th. Earth, II. 218. A great many quæries and difficulties might be proposed relating to the millennium.
1719. D’Urfey, Pills (1872), II. 99. What News, is the Quæry.
3. A mark of interrogation (?), used to indicate a doubt as to the correctness of the statement, phrase, letter, etc., to which it is appended or refers; the abbreviation qy. etc. used for the same purpose.
1836. in Smart.
1882–. in Ogilvie, etc.
