rice queen
- noun
- US
- She was crowned the rice queen at the annual agricultural festival.
Examples
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The rice queen gave a heartfelt speech about supporting local farmers.
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Winning the title of rice queen was a great honor for her and her family.
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The new rice queen was crowned at the festival.
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Every year, many young women aspire to become a rice queen.
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She was crowned the rice queen at the annual agricultural festival.
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The rice queen gave a heartfelt speech about supporting local farmers.
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Winning the title of rice queen was a great honor for her and her family.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly built from 'rice' (the domain) + 'queen' (an honored or preeminent person), so a learner who knows both words can readily infer 'a woman honored as the leading figure in rice farming or at a rice-related event.' This noun+noun compositional pattern (queen of X / X queen) is common cross-linguistically and found in festival/title contexts, making the expression transparently interpretable by B1 learners.
Etymology
Rice queen may come from harvest festivals where a woman was crowned to celebrate the rice crop. The image of a queen standing for the harvest helps explain why the term means 'a woman honored as a leader in rice farming'.