qualm
Plural: qualms
Noun
- An uneasy feeling of doubt, worry, or misgiving.
- uneasiness about the fitness of an action
- a mild state of nausea
- A feeling of apprehension, doubt, fear etc.
- A sudden sickly feeling; queasiness.
- A prick of the conscience; a moral scruple, a pang of guilt.
- Mortality; plague; pestilence.
- A calamity or disaster.
Verb
- To have a sickly feeling.
Examples
- He had a qualm about playing ’QUIZZICAL’ without checking the dictionary first.
- This lawyer has no qualms about saving people who are on the wrong side of the law.
Origin / Etymology
Perhaps from Middle English qualm, cwalm (“death, sickness, plague”), which is from Old English cwealm (West Saxon: "death, disaster, plague"), ūtcwalm (Anglian: "utter destruction"), from Proto-West Germanic *kwalm (“killing, death, destruction”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷelH- (“to stick, pierce; pain, injury, death”), whence also quell. Although the sense development is possible, this has the problem that there are no attestations in intermediate senses before the appearance of "pang of apprehension, etc." in the 16th century. The alternative etymology is from Dutch kwalm or German Qualm (“steam, vapor, mist”) earlier “daze, stupefaction”, which is from the root of German quellen (“to stream, well up”). The sense “feeling of faintness” is from 1530; “uneasiness, doubt” from 1553; “scruple of conscience” from 1649.
Synonyms
misgiving, queasiness, scruple, squeamishness, apprehension, compunction, unease, uneasiness
Scrabble Score: 16
qualm: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordqualm: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
qualm: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary