Crossword clues for qualm
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Qualm \Qualm\, n. [AS. cwealm death, slaughter, pestilence, akin to OS. & OHG. qualm. See Quail to cower.]
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Sickness; disease; pestilence; death. [Obs.]
thousand slain and not of qualm ystorve [dead].
--Chaucer. A sudden attack of illness, faintness, or pain; an agony. `` Qualms of heartsick agony.''
--Milton.-
Especially, a sudden sensation of nausea.
For who, without a qualm, hath ever looked On holy garbage, though by Homer cooked?
--Roscommon. A prick or scruple of conscience; uneasiness of conscience; compunction.
--Dryden.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Old English cwealm (West Saxon) "death, murder, slaughter; disaster; plague; torment," utcualm (Anglian) "utter destruction," probably related to cwellan "to kill, murder, execute," cwelan "to die" (see quell). Sense softened to "feeling of faintness" 1520s; figurative meaning "uneasiness, doubt" is from 1550s; that of "scruple of conscience" is 1640s.\n
\nEvidence of a direct path from the Old English to the modern senses is wanting, but it is plausible, via the notion of "fit of sickness." The other suggested etymology, less satisfying, is to take the "fit of uneasiness" sense from Dutch kwalm "steam, vapor, mist" (cognate with German Qualm "smoke, vapor, stupor"), which also might be ultimately from the same Germanic root as quell.
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context now chiefly UK dialectal English) mortality; plague; pestilence. 2 (context now chiefly UK dialectal English) A calamity or disaster. 3 A feeling of apprehension, doubt, fear etc. (from 16th c.)
WordNet
n. uneasiness about the fitness of an action [syn: scruple, misgiving]
a mild state of nausea [syn: queasiness, squeamishness]
Usage examples of "qualm".
And most important of all, it delivered the initiative for further political action into the hands of a younger, more radical group who had no qualms at all about apostrophizing the People.
The logothete of the treasury looked as if he would rather have been anywhere else than on the deck of a galley in the middle of a sea fight, but, having no choice in the matter, he was doing his best to keep up a bold front despite qualms.
Still, Chen paid very well, and if the Empire was going to rank growth and bad seed, Planch had no qualms about avoiding the worst of the discomforts and misfortunes.
I had no qualms about doing this to a dying man, and no compunction: he was doomed anyway, he was a psychopathic monster who killed for the love of it and, most of all.
But Serena laughed at him, accusing him of being frightened of all the quizzy people in Bath, and he stifled his qualms.
When the qualm subsided, leaving her wobbly and clammy-fleshed, the carts had already passed from view.
Suddenly a qualm of nausea swept over me, my senses swam, my knees gave beneath me and I pitched headlong to the ground upon the very verge of the dizzy bluff.
Jennet says she is oddly hesitant to speak of it, but that she came to Appleton Manor to visit without a qualm the last time her father wanted to measure the chapel.
Having some qualms of conscience, he put on a secular dress, and on nearing Asuncion put his religious habit over it.
The most prestigious scientific institute in Germany, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics, the German Research Council, and their extensive biomedical and eugenics research programs, had no qualms about the killing of so-called inferior and polluted races.
Tommy a qualm of the stomach, but mother bruin seemed to relish that food immensely.
Russian authors feel no qualms about having characters refer to each other by any or all of the names in any combination, or so it seems.
If the guidance comps, in their primitive way, felt any rebellious qualm about firing on their larger cousin, there was no indicationjust a few score fire-trails arcing away toward the boojum.
But evidently they had come to the last move in the game, and as Condy reflected that after all he had never known the real Travis, that the girl whom he told himself he knew through and through was only the Travis of dinner parties and afternoon functions, he was suddenly surprised to experience a sudden qualm of deep and genuine regret.
But she crushed down her qualms, sealed her letter, and sent the Garibaldian to post it.