Word.ws English Dictionary

qualms

qualms is the plural of qualm.

Meaning of qualm

Noun

qualm (plural qualms)

  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?1692, Roger L’Estrange, “[Miscellany Fables.] Fab[le] CCCLXXXIII. A Spider and the Gout [Reflexion].”, in Fables, of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists: […], London: […] R[ichard] Sare, […], →OCLC...
  2. A sudden sickly feeling; queasiness.
  3. 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. (UK, archaic, dialectal) Mortality; plague; pestilence.
  5. (UK, archaic, dialectal) A calamity or disaster.

See all 6 meanings of qualm

Questions about qualms

What is qualms the plural of?
Qualms is the plural of qualm.

Words near qualms in the dictionary

  1. qualmishly
  2. qualmishness
  3. qualmless
  4. qualmlessly
  5. qualmlessness
  6. qualms
  7. qualmy
  8. qualophile
  9. qualophiles
  10. qualophobe
  11. qualophobes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: qualms (page history and authors); qualm (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “qualms.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/qualms. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.