Dianna's Weekly Dash of Different Diction

Welcome to this week's Dash of Different Diction.Today's word is queue. This can be defined in two (similar) ways.

• (n.): a file or line, esp. of people waiting their turn.
• (v.): to form in a line while waiting (often fol. by up).

In Scotland, and most likely all of Britain (I heard this in Ireland as well), you would use this instead of line. No one here will say, "Are you in line?" Instead you would say, "Are you in the queue?" Other ways to say this are...

1. "Would you look at the queue for the tickets!"
2. "Were you queuing before me?" or "Are you queuing?"
   
3. "Queue starts here."

A bonus to this week's Weekly Dash of Different Diction, to not throw you off while you're queuing, is that instead of saying "Next in line" or "Who's next?" at the register, the salesperson is more likely to say "Who's first?" or "I'll take who's first." I went shopping all day Saturday last weekend and heard it for the first time. Don't know why but it made me giggle.

"First!"