Other forms: qualms
A qualm is a small doubt about whether something is right. Have no qualms, a qualm of conscience, without a qualm.
It is nearly always used in the negative, so people report having no qualms far more often than having one. The older sense was a sudden feeling of sickness, and the moral use grew out of that.
1nounqualmA small doubt about whether something is right.
“She had no qualm about telling the inspector everything.”
qualm is a doubt.
Old English cwealm meant death, plague or disaster; the sense narrowed to a sudden sick feeling and then to a scruple of conscience.
Middle English
qualm
English, today
qualm
Built from
From Middle English qualm. 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.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA