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stranger
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Please forgive me if this is in the wrong place. AWAD has a huge variety of threads.
I have heard for years that the use of "queue" and "quiesce" are improper as applied by OS/390 (mainframe) sysprogs. Having been one, I wish to know if I sent all those hundreds of email and messages in error. The typical usage was "IMS has a huge deadletter queue that will be cleared by a coldstart on Sunday following the bi-weekly IPL." or "The point-in-time (PIT) recovery of your database will require a quiesce point in the system log. If there are open logs for your database spanning all desired PIT recovery timestamps then no quiesce has occurred..." ad nauseum. Alternate spellings and usages include: quiescing, queueing, quiesced, queued. My dear departed mentor Ed Oerter would certainly have had something to say about the use of queue as a verb, but I have seen it frequently.
You should see what the "Check spelling" button did with my computerese...
Nosdrahcir Kram Nimajneb
Nosdrahcir
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Welcome aboard Ben. This is as good a place as any for your question. As you explore our wonderful world, you'll see that the contents of categories and threads have only a tenuous relation to the titles.
I see nothing wrong with your first example of queue. I also see nothing with the use of queue as a verb: "We queued for hours only to find all the tickets had been sold by the time we reached the box office."
The only quiesce I know is the Latin imperative of a verb meaning "be at rest".
The current issue of "English Today" has an article called "Missing in Action" about the predilection in computer messages to users for unaccusatives (normally transitive verbs which have been made intransitive as an equivalent of the passive). For example, "Setup is initialising" rather than "Setup is being initialised", or "The page is downloading" rather than "The page is being downloaded."
Bingley
Bingley
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Hiya, Neb, and welcome to the nuthouse! I have little to add about the crimes of computerese, but to spread a little light in the world ya gotta do sumptin' about that apostrophe on your homepage... 
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old hand
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old hand
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I see nothing wrong with your first example of queue.
Hold your horses there Bingley. Ben's example states:
IMS has a huge deadletter queue that will be cleared by a coldstart on Sunday
A queue (in this sense) is a temporary holding place for data. For example, a messaging server receives e-mails through MTA from another server and stores the locally until they can be processed (e.g. checked for a virus, categorised etc.) - this is a messaging queue
Queue is also a programming term used to define what order data is processed.
If data is being collected only in order to be purged then it's not a queue because a) it's not being stored in a particular useful order, and b) is not awaiting further processing.
Couldn't it just be called a dead-letter repository, heap or collection? Or to restate the sentence:
IMS is congested with excess dead-letter data that will be cleared by a cold start on Sunday
Never heard of quiese, but one can acquiesce in or to something. Anyway, here some tidbits about queue:
When the British stand in queues (as they have been doing at least since 1837, when this meaning of the word is first recorded in English), they may not realize they form a tail. The French word queue from which the English word is borrowed is a descendant of Latin côda, meaning “tail.” French queue appeared in 1748 in English, referring to a plait of hair hanging down the back of the neck. Latin côda is also the source of Italian coda, which was adopted into English as a musical term (like so many other English musical terms that come from Italian). A coda is thus literally the “tail end” of a movement or composition. (The American Heritage® Dictionary)
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addict
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addict
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A queue (in this sense) is a temporary holding place for data.
and the dead-letter queue uses exactly the same technical mechanisms as the acceptable messaging queues, it just doesn't have an active server to process the queue members. So it gets called a queue like the others even though, as BY points out, queues usually offer some hope of being served (except the ones I join).
quiesce - to make dormant, inactivate. Widely used in IT industry, usually in the sense of temporarily placing active processes or applications on hold to allow some housekeeping or upgrade. My online Pocket Oxford has quiescent but not quiesce.
Rod
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normally transitive verbs which have been made intransitive as an equivalent of the passive
Many grammar checkers (sic) have a pathological dread of the passive voice. This trait has bullied many overly cautious writers into eschewing its use.
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1. intr. To become quiescent; to subside into.
1833 Wild Sports of West I. 27 Did tired nature quiesce for a moment, I was+roused with a tornado of+sounds. 1888 Howells Annie Kilburn xxx. 330 The village, after a season of acute conjecture, quiesced into+sufferance of the anomaly.
2. intr. Of a letter: To become silent; said of the feeble consonants in Hebrew when their sound is absorbed in that of a preceding vowel.
1828 Stuart Elem. Heb. Lang. (1831) 25 A moveable consonant is one which is sounded, and does not quiesce or coalesce. 1853 J. R. Wolf Practical Heb. Gr. 8 The letters JTUB are said to quiesce in the vowels after which they are placed.
OED2
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Carpal Tunnel
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re: Queue-- French queue appeared in 1748 in English, referring to a plait of hair hanging down the back of the neck.
this is the first meaning i knew for the word queue-- in the 1950's (how is it i remember things from the 1950's? i can't be that old!) the word was used to define old fashioned chinese-- "a china man with a queue" -- this was from reading-- since i remember not knowing how to pronounce it!
quiescent is a much newer word for me.--is use as a legal term in food-- some ice cream is quiescently frozen-- frozen with out being whipped or beaten at the same time -- still frozen is how is is defined-- where still means motionless. many of the indian (sub continent) ice creams are quiescently frozen, and have a very different texture than most american ice creams.
i never put these words together--or saw the common root..
this is wonderful-- it not just a new word-- it is understanding the common thread of meaning..
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Carpal Tunnel
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I never thought of the etymology of acquiesce
acquiesce
vi.
Fr acquiescer, to yield to < L acquiescere < ad, to + quiescere: see QUIET to agree or consent quietly without protest, but without enthusiasm: often with in to acquiesce in a decision"
—SYN CONSENT
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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"as a legal term in food" -> If it's quiescently frozen, it isn't ice cream although lord knows what NYC accepts ;). I have seen the alternative "frozen confection" used to describe a quiescently frozen treat.
Welcome, Ben. You will find that the board's spellchecker, known as Aenigma, is more a source of amusement than of assistance.
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