Querie

Querie, in historical English, refers to an inquiry or a question asked for information. Today the standard spelling is query, and querie is generally regarded as obsolete or confined to discussions of older texts. The term appeared in Middle English and Early Modern English with the same broad sense as a request for information or clarification.

Etymology and variants: Querie derives from Latin quaerere, meaning to seek or ask, through Old French querie and Middle English forms such as querie, quere, or querry. Variant spellings were common before standardized orthography, and many early texts feature the forms querie and querry alongside query.

Usage in literature and history: In historical documents, legal records, and literary works from the medieval to early modern periods, querie was used to denote a question, a doubt, or an inquiry. It appears in discussions of information requests, reasoning, and the act of asking for more detail. In modern editions and scholarly work, these instances are typically cited with the modern spelling query for clarity.

In computing and contemporary English: In current usage, query is the standard term in both general and technical contexts. A query is a request for information, such as a database query that retrieves data, or a search query entered into a search engine. The older form querie is sometimes encountered in historical analyses or as a deliberate archaising choice in literature.

See also: query, querry, inquiry, questioning.