qualm
/kwɑ(l)m/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.89 in modern English
16
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A feeling of apprehension, doubt, fear etc.
noun
Example Sentences
- "[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."
- "Opponents of those privatization plans hoped to use Mr. [Neil] Armstrong's qualms as ammunition to block the White House initiatives, and they asked for more public statements."
- "Questions of bad taste have hung around Dear Evan Hansen since it debuted on Broadway in 2016, though such qualms were mostly drowned out by praise for Platt’s visceral live performance and the catchy Broadway-by-way-of-Christian-rock tunes from wunderkind songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (who are also responsible for the toe-tapping numbers from The Greatest Showman)."
- "This lawyer has no qualms about saving people who are on the wrong side of the law."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *gʷelH- Proto-Indo-European *gʷolH-mos Proto-Germanic *kwalmaz Proto-West Germanic *kwalm Old English cwealm Middle English qualm English qualm 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.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: qualm, cwealm, *kwalm, *gʷelH-, kwalm, quellen
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /kwɑ(l)m/
- British English: /kwɑːm/
Usage
- British usage
- Archaic
- Intransitive verb