queer ken

• quier ken, quire ken, quyer ken

From queer (“weird; odd”) + ken (“house”).

queer ken (plural queer kens)

1. (dated, Britain, thieves' cant and Polari) A prison.
   • 2015 October 12, Lowe, Adam, “Poem of the week: Vada That”, in The Guardian‎:

     Fact is, / she’ll end up in the charpering carsey / of Jennifer Justice. What is this / queer ken she’s in?

   • For more examples of usage of this term, see Citations:queer ken.

• See Thesaurus:prison

• queer-ken hall (“prison”)

• [Francis Grose] (1788), “Queer ken”, in A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 2nd corrected and enlarged edition, London: Printed for S. Hooper, […], OCLC 3138643.
• Farmer, John Stephen (1902) Slang and Its Analogues‎, volume 5, pages 345
• Baker, Paul (2004) Fantabulosa: A Dictionary of Polari and Gay Slang, Bloomsbury, →ISBN, page 49