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qualm

noun
/kwɑːm/UK/kwɑ(l)m/US

Etymology

Perhaps from Middle English qualm, cwalm (“death, sickness, plague”), which is from Old English cwealm (West Saxon: "death, disaster, plague"), ūtcualm (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.

  1. derived from quellen — “to stream, well up”
  2. borrowed from Qualm — “steam, vapor, mist”
  3. borrowed from kwalm
  4. derived from *gʷelH-✻
  5. inherited from *kwalm✻
  6. inherited from cwealm
  7. inherited from qualm

Definitions

  1. A feeling of apprehension, doubt, fear etc.

    • [W]ho vvould not rather Sleep Quietly upon a Hammock, vvithout either Cares in his Head, or Crudities in his Stomach, then lye Carking upon a Bed of State, vvith the Qualms and Tvvinges that accompany Surfeits and Exceſs?
    • "Do you have any particular qualms about leaving Pencey?" / "Oh, I have a few qualms, all right. Sure … but not too many. Not yet, anyway.[…]"
    • Jem’s face showed brief indecision on the ethics of withholding his own dime, but his innate courtesy won and he shifted his dime to his pocket. I did likewise with no qualms.

  2. A sudden sickly feeling

    A sudden sickly feeling; queasiness.

  3. A prick of the conscience

    A prick of the conscience; a moral scruple, a pang of guilt.

    • This lawyer has no qualms about saving people who are on the wrong side of the law.
  4. ›+ 3 more definitions

    1. Mortality

      Mortality; plague; pestilence.

    2. A calamity or disaster.

    3. To have a sickly feeling.

The neighborhood

Derived

qualmish, qualmishly, qualmishness, qualmless, qualmy

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at qualm. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01qualm02queasiness03nausea04sickness05qualmishness06qualmish07qualms

A definitional loop anchored at qualm. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

7 hops · closes at qualm

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA