squeamish

• POS: Adjective
• HYPHEN: squeam=ish

CIDE DICTIONARY

squeamish, a. [OE. squaimous, sweymous, probably from OE. sweem, swem, dizziness, a swimming in the head; cf. Icel. sveimr a bustle, a stir, Norw. sveim a hovering about, a sickness that comes upon one, Icel. svimi a giddiness, AS. swīma. The word has been perhaps confused with qualmish. Cf. Swim to be dizzy.].

 Having a stomach that is easily turned or nauseated; hence, nice to excess in taste; fastidious; easily disgusted; apt to be offended at trifling improprieties.  [1913 Webster]
"Quoth he, that honor's very squeamish
That takes a basting for a blemish."  [1913 Webster]
"His muse is rustic, and perhaps too plain
The men of squeamish taste to entertain."  [1913 Webster]
"So ye grow squeamish, Gods, and sniff at heaven."  [1913 Webster]

Syn. -- Fastidious; dainty; overnice; scrupulous. See Fastidious.

OXFORD DICTIONARY

squeamish, adj.
1 easily nauseated or disgusted.
2 fastidious or overscrupulous in questions of propriety, honesty, etc.

Derivative

squeamishly adv. squeamishness n.

Etymology

ME var. of squeamous (now dial.), f. AF escoymos, of unkn. orig.

THESAURUS

squeamish

airsick, barfy, bashful, boggling, carsick, critical, dainty, delicate, demanding, demurring, difficult, diffident, dizzy, exacting, faltering, fastidious, finical, finicking, finicky, finikin, fuddy-duddy, fuss-budgety, fussy, hard to please, hesitant, hesitating, meticulous, modest, nauseated, nauseous, nice, painstaking, particular, pawky, pernickety, persnickety, prudish, pukish, puky, punctilious, qualmish, qualmy, queasy, queer, scrupulous, seasick, shaky, shrinking, shy, stickling, unsettled, upset, vertiginous

ROGET THESAURUS

squeamish

Unwillingness

N unwillingness, indisposition, indisposedness, disinclination, aversation, nolleity, nolition, renitence, renitency, reluctance, indifference, backwardness, slowness, want of alacrity, want of readiness, indocility, scrupulousness, scrupulosity, qualms of conscience, twinge of conscience, delicacy, demur, scruple, qualm, shrinking, recoil, hesitation, fastidiousness, averseness, dissent, refusal, unwilling, not in the vein, loth, loath, shy of, disinclined, indisposed, averse, reluctant, not content, adverse, laggard, backward, remiss, slack, slow to, indifferent, scrupulous, squeamish, repugnant, restiff, restive, demurring, unconsenting, involuntary, unwillingly, grudgingly, with a heavy heart, with a bad, with an ill grace, against one's wishes, against one's will, against the grain, sore against one's wishes, sore against one's will, sore against one's grain, invita Minerva, a contre caeur, malgre soi, in spite of one's teeth, in spite of oneself, nolens volens, perforce, under protest, no, not for the world, far be it from me.

Disease

N disease, illness, sickness, ailing, all the ills that flesh is heir to, morbidity, morbosity, infirmity, ailment, indisposition, complaint, disorder, malady, distemper, distemperature, visitation, attack, seizure, stroke, fit, delicacy, loss of health, invalidation, cachexy, cachexia, atrophy, marasmus, indigestion, dyspepsia, decay, decline, consumption, palsy, paralysis, prostration, taint, pollution, infection, sepsis, septicity, infestation, epidemic, pandemic, endemic, epizootic, murrain, plague, pestilence, pox, sore, ulcer, abscess, fester, boil, pimple, wen, carbuncle, gathering, imposthume, peccant humor, issue, rot, canker, cold sore, fever sore, cancer, carcinoma, leukemia, neoplastic disease, malignancy, tumor, caries, mortification, corruption, gangrene, sphacelus, sphacelation, leprosy, eruption, rash, breaking out, fever, temperature, calenture, inflammation, ague, angina pectoris, appendicitis, Asiatic cholera, spasmodic cholera, biliary calculus, kidney stone, black death, bubonic plague, pneumonic plague, blennorrhagia, blennorrhoea, blood poisoning, bloodstroke, bloody flux, brash, breakbone fever, dengue fever, malarial fever, Q-fever, heart attack, cardiac arrest, cardiomyopathy, hardening of the arteries, arteriosclerosis, atherosclerosis, bronchocele, canker rash, cardialgia, carditis, endocarditis, cholera, asphyxia, chlorosis, chorea, cynanche, dartre, enanthem, enanthema, erysipelas, exanthem, exanthema, gallstone, goiter, gonorrhea, green sickness, grip, grippe, influenza, flu, hay fever, heartburn, heaves, rupture, hernia, hemorrhoids, piles, herpes, itch, king's evil, lockjaw, measles, mumps, polio, necrosis, pertussis, phthisis, pneumonia, psora, pyaemia, pyrosis, quinsy, rachitis, ringworm, rubeola, St. Vitus's dance, scabies, scarlatina, scarlet fever, scrofula, seasickness, struma, syntexis, tetanus, tetter, tonsillitis, tonsilitis, tracheocele, trachoma, trismus, varicella, varicosis, variola, water qualm, whooping cough, yellow fever, yellow jack, fatal disease, dangerous illness, galloping consumption, churchyard cough, general breaking up, break up of the system, idiocy insanity, martyr to disease, cripple, the halt the lame and the blind, valetudinary, valetudinarian, invalid, patient, case, sickroom, sick- chamber, pathology, etiology, nosology, anthrax, bighead, blackleg, blackquarter, cattle plague, glanders, mange, scrapie, milk sickness, heartworm, feline leukemia, roundworms, quarter-evil, quarter-ill, rinderpest, virus, bacterium, bacteria, DNA virus, RNA virus, rhinovirus, rhabdovirus, picornavirus, herpesvirus, cytomegalovirus, CMV, human immunodefficiency virus, HIV, diseased, ailing, ill, ill of, taken ill, seized with, indisposed, unwell, sick, squeamish, poorly, seedy, affected with illness, afflicted with illness, laid up, confined, bedridden, invalided, in hospital, on the sick list, out of health, out of sorts, under the weather, valetudinary, unsound, unhealthy, sickly, morbid, morbose, healthless, infirm, chlorotic, unbraced, drooping, flagging, lame, crippled, halting, morbid, tainted, vitiated, peccant, contaminated, poisoned, tabid, mangy, leprous, cankered, rotten, rotten to the core, rotten at the core, withered, palsied, paralytic, dyspeptic, luetic, pneumonic, pulmonic, phthisic, rachitic, syntectic, syntectical, tabetic, varicose, touched in the wind, broken-winded, spavined, gasping, hors de combat, weakly, weakened, decrepit, decayed, incurable, in declining health, cranky, in a bad way, in danger, prostrate, moribund, morbific epidemic, endemic, zymotic.

Fastidiousness

N fastidiousness, nicety, hypercriticism, difficulty in being pleased, friandise, epicurism, omnia suspendens naso, epicure, gourmet, prudery, fastidious, nice, delicate, delicat, finical, finicky, demanding, meticulous, exacting, strict, anal, difficult, dainty, lickerish, squeamish, thin-skinned, squeasy, queasy, hard to please, difficult to please, querulous, particular, straitlaced, scrupulous, censorious, hypercritical, overcritical, noli me tangere.