English
qualm
Qualm may come from Middle English qualm ‘death, sickness, plague’.
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500qualm‘death, sickness, plague’uncertain
- Englishearliest quotation 1692qualm
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
Earlier history uncertain.
Lineage
- Middle Englishc. 1150–1500qualm‘death, sickness, plague’uncertain
- Englishearliest quotation 1692qualm
Earliest quotation: 1692, Roger L’Estrange, [Miscellany Fables.] Fab[le] CCCLXXXIII. A Spider and the Go: “[W]ho vvould not rather Sleep Quietly upon a Hammock,…”
The story
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 (‘steam, vapor, mist’) earlier “daze, stupefaction”, which is from the root of German quellen (‘to stream, well up’). The sense “feeling of faintness” is from 1530; “uneasiness, doubt” from 1553; “scruple of conscience” from 1649.
Linked words
through Proto-Indo-European *gʷelH- ‘to stick, pierce’
ball, symbol, devil, metabolic, emblem, hyperbolic, parable, quill, parabolic, embolism, anabolic, obelisk, quell, quail, metabolize, pul, hyperbola, 67 more
Today it means
noun A feeling of apprehension, doubt, fear etc.
Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.
Etymograph / Middle English qualm / qualm