Quean (pronounced kween)
(1) An overly forward, boisterous, impudent or disreputable woman (archaic).
(2) A (usually) female prostitute (archaic).
(3) A girl or young woman, especially a robust one (archaic British dialectal slang).
(4) A young unmarried woman or girl; daughter (Scots English, quine the alternative spelling).
(5) A useless old woman (a one-off, ex post facto, Australian invention).
(6) In 1930s Australian slang (1) an effeminate man, (2) a suspected or confessed homosexual.
Pre 1000: From the Middle English quene (a woman; a low-born woman) from the Old English cwēn & cwene (woman (also female serf, hussy, prostitute (as in portcwene "public woman"))), from the Proto-Germanic kwenon (source also of the Old Saxon quan, the Old High German quena, the Old Norse kona, the Gothic qino (wife, woman), the Greek gunē and the Middle Dutch kone & quene (vain or worthless woman). The ultimate root was the Germanic kwenōn from the Proto-Germanic kwenǭ (woman) from the primitive Indo-European gwḗn (woman) and was related also to the Dutch kween (a barren woman; a barren cow), the Low German quene (barren cow; heifer), the German kon (wife), the Swedish kvinna (woman), the Icelandic kona (woman) and the Gothic qinō (woman) & qēns (wife).
The word had a strange history in the British Isles and the similarity to the homophonic "queen" must have accounted for at least some of the tangle. Some etymologists the form was used in deliberate opposition to "queen" in the sense of "woman considered without regard to qualities or position" thus the frequent use as a slighting or abusive term for a woman and in the Middle English it could mean "a harlot; an old woman or crone" and by the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries it was in popular use to mean "a hussy; a woman of loose virtue". North of the border however, things could be different and in the late fifteenth century, in Scotland it carried the sense of a "young, robust woman". Quean is a noun and queanish an adjective; the noun plural is queans but all are now thought obsolete except for historic purposes.
Queen and quean
Rumors about the proclivities of Sir William McMahon (1908-1988; Australian prime minister 1971-1972), floated around within the Canberra beltway almost from the time he was first elected to parliament in 1949. Usually the gossip was conducted in quiet, knowing sniggers but one day, on the floor of the house, Gough Whitlam (1916-2014; Australian prime minister 1972-1975), in one of his moods, called McMahon “a queen” which on reflection, he decided might have over-stepped the mark and told the Hansard office to edit the official record, saying he actually meant “quean” which he assured them meant “a useless old women”. During the past thousand years it had never meant that and in the 1930s it had been recorded in Australian slang as a gay slur but the press were still forgiving of Whitlam, the view being it was a rhetorical flourish like Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) once calling British politician Duff Cooper (1890–1954) a krampfhenne (a Bavarian dialectical word meaning “nervous old hen”).
Sir Robert Menzies (1894-1978; Australian prime minister 1939-1941 & 1949-1966) himself advised McMahon if he ever wished to become Prime Minister, he would need a wife and children so, upon hearing of Menzies’ plans to retire, he made contact with a young lady he’d earlier met. He was then fifty-seven, she twenty-four years younger and they became engaged within six months, the marriage eventually producing four children. Unfortunately, Menzies’ most ill-fated electoral strategy worked and McMahon became prime-minister in 1970. The governor-general (Sir Paul Hasluck (1905–1993; Governor-General of Australia 1969-1974) who would later appoint him to the prime-ministership, in March 1968 confessed to:
“…a dislike of McMahon, the longer one is associated with him the deeper the contempt for him grows and I find it hard to allow him any merit. Disloyal, devious, dishonest, untrustworthy, petty, cowardly - all these adjectives have been weighed by me and I could not in truth modify or reduce any one of them in its application to McMahon. I find him a contemptible creature and this contempt and the adjectives I have chosen to apply to him sum up defects that, in my estimation of other people, cannot be balanced by better qualities."
Sir Paul did allow that McMahon was renowned for "industry and pertinacity in a cause" but added to his diary a note that it was "...the industry and persistence of a man applying himself often to a mean purpose." Anxious perhaps that it not appear his opinion was formed from mere prejudice, he recorded that long ago "...the unkindest thought I had of him was to think him something of an oddity and a rather funny little man. There was a time when I might have sought to find good points for he is a pathetic figure, obviously an incomplete and sorry little person, small in stature, ill-developed, extremely sensitive about his lack of manly qualities and sometimes ingenuous in his bid for liking. But his vanity and deviousness in self-advancement go beyond a point where one can continue to excuse them or make allowances for them out of sympathy. I do not respect him and do not trust him." So even if Sir Paul was at pains to point out he didn't take an instant dislike to Sir William, it seems might have saved time and warming to the topic, he recalled in 1951 hearing McMahon who, although already for over a year a member of parliament, was still acting as a uniformed attendant at functions for the Lord Mayor of Sydney, assisting his aunt by handing out tea and cakes to the ladies in attendance. Sir Paul must have taken particular delight in adding "He would be the only man among all the ladies and seemed to love it. He never seemed to be in the company of men but was mincing and simpering like a little girl." None of these character traits of course disqualify anyone from high political office although they may have contributed to McMahon being reckoned still perhaps Australia’s worst prime-minister although that may be unfair to some of his twenty-first century successors.
Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974), escorting Sonia McMahon (1932-2010) to a state dinner, the White House, 1971; husband William bringing up the rear.
There was one highlight during McMahon’s brief, mediocre tenure in the Lodge. On a state visit to the United States in 1971, his wife wore to dinner a white dress, slit both sides to the armpits and held together from the waist up by rhinestones less than an inch (25 mm) apart. A garment of extraordinarily daring by the standards of the diplomatic corps, the dress made headlines world-wide and was the subject of more analysis than was ever extended to McMahon. His wife always dismissed speculation about her husband being a bit gay, claiming the rumors were started by Gough Whitlam after McMahon wore suede shoes into parliament.
Lindsay Lohan in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004) (left) and Patrick Mullins' revelations of a middle-aged drama quean, his biography of Sir William McMahon (Tiberius With A Telephone (2020) Scribe, 784 pp, ISBN: 9781922310637 (right)).
The jibe "Tiberius With A Telephone" came also from Whitlam, an allusion to McMahon's reputation for intrigue and an example of his fondness for flaunting his classical learning and flair for conjuring alliterative phrases. Remarkably, given that for half a century McMahon's brief premiership has been dismissed as insignificant, incipit and inept, Mullins' biography of this previously neglected administration is a revelation and a classic work of political history, an absorbing tale of the middle-years of the twentieth century.
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