qualm

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   uneasiness about the fitness of an action

   The homeless could not afford qualms about sleeping on the street.

2. 2
   noun

   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?

3. 3
   noun

   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. 4
   noun

   a mild state of nausea

5. 5
   noun

   A sudden sickly feeling; queasiness.

6. 6
   noun

   Mortality; plague; pestilence.

7. 7
   noun

   A calamity or disaster.

8. 8
   verb

   To have a sickly feeling.

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…