W. Smith
The word “qualm” came to my attention this week when I overheard someone say, “She didn’t qualm when I gave her the estimate.” It made me wonder about using qualm as a verb. Still, considering how our language continuously changes, the speaker might just be ahead of her time. Maybe by Halloween we’ll all be qualming.
Now to our WOTM, the noun qualm. A common meaning of our word is a misgiving — an uneasy feeling of doubt, worry or fear, especially in regard to one’s own conduct. Synonyms include compunction, hesitation, and perhaps anxiety, scruple, apprehension and foreboding. Personally, I link it to one’s conscience, like a prick or twinge of conscience about an action taken or under consideration.
The etymology of qualm is revealing. Middle English “cwalm” (meaning death, sickness, plague) probably came from Old English “cwealm” (death, disaster, plague). Also factor in related West Saxon, Proto-Germanic and even Proto-European words for death, destruction and piercing. After meaning death and destruction, by 1530 the meaning had softened to a feeling of faintness. Note Shakespeare’s use in the late 1500s – such as Gloucester’s line, “Some sudden qualm hath struck me at the heart.”
One of my sources posits three distinct meanings of the noun qualm: 1) the call of a raven—an obsolete meaning, though possibly related to foreboding; 2) death — typically violent and related to disaster (Remember the plague); and 3) our modern definition that possibly morphed from death to the tamer “pang” or queasiness.
My favorite source concludes his consideration of qualm with this thought-provoking example, “I think the qualm you feel today when you fudge your tax deductions is the same word that meant mass murder several centuries ago.”
I invite you to submit your thoughts, feelings, or qualms to [email protected]; or send along your own special word with some comments that shed light on it, to [email protected].