Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun An uneasy feeling about the propriety or rightness of a course of action.
- noun A sudden disturbing feeling.
- noun A sudden feeling of sickness, faintness, or nausea.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Illness; disease; pestilence; plague.
- noun A sudden attack of illness; a turn of faintness or suffering; a throe or throb of pain.
- noun Especially, a sudden fit or seizure of sickness at the stomach; a sensation of nausea.
- noun A scruple or twinge of conscience; compunction; uneasiness.
- noun The boding cry of a raven.
- To be sick; suffer from qualms.
- To cause pain or qualms.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun obsolete Sickness; disease; pestilence; death.
- noun A sudden attack of illness, faintness, or pain; an agony.
- noun Especially, a sudden sensation of nausea.
- noun A prick or scruple of conscience; uneasiness of conscience; compunction.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun
Mortality ;plague ;pestilence . - noun A
calamity ordisaster .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun uneasiness about the fitness of an action
- noun a mild state of nausea
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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My only qualm is that you have a punctuation error in the first sentence – an error guaranteed to make an editor think twice about reading on.
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My only qualm is that Angel didn't use a celebrity participant like Ray Nagin, just in case some strange complication occurred with the trick.
Archive 2008-09-01 2008
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My only qualm is that Angel didn't use a celebrity participant like Ray Nagin, just in case some strange complication occurred with the trick.
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It has to be one of the most personable documentaries I have ever seen and my only qualm is that I wish that there were some way to find out how they have progressed since the surgery.
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My only real qualm is that BB, like every action film these days, uses the BLUR!
Batman Begins 2005
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I really felt all the characters as they were so well drawn and my only qualm is the significance of the pious brother Henry and as he was of no significance.
Reader reviews of The Crimson Petal and The White by Michel Faber. 2002
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My qualm is not with the message: We don’t tailgate.
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The studio provided a review copy, which brings up my main qualm.
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"No," said Dawson, "or if I have, it is a mere momentary qualm which is gone before I can realise it."
Recollections With Photogravure Portrait of the Author and a number of Original Letters, of which one by George Meredith and another by Robert Louis Stevenson are reproduced in facsimile David Christie Murray
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I felt a kind of qualm of faintness and downsinking about my heart and stomach, to the dispelling of which I took a thimbleful of spirits, and, tying my red comforter about my neck, I marched briskly to the session-house.
The World's Greatest Books — Volume 06 — Fiction Various 1909
reesetee commented on the word qualm
I wonder...can you have just *one* qualm or do you have to have several? ;-)
April 5, 2007
uselessness commented on the word qualm
I have my qualms about that particular use...
April 5, 2007
sionnach commented on the word qualm
German for 'fog/murk'.
January 9, 2008
Prolagus commented on the word qualm
You will be amused when you see that I have more than once deceived without the slightest qualm of conscience, both knaves and fools.
(Giacomo Casanova)
March 18, 2008