Squeamish means easily sickened or shocked. Squeamish about blood, not for the squeamish, feeling squeamish.
It is used most about the sight of blood, injury or anything medical — squeamish about needles is the standard example. Not for the squeamish is the fixed warning before something graphic. It also covers moral fastidiousness: squeamish about the details of the deal. Note squeamishness; and that the word's origin is uncertain and probably a blend of two older words.
1adjectivesqueamishEasily sickened or shocked.
“I'm too squeamish to watch the operation scenes in hospital dramas.”
squeamish is a quality of being easily sickened.
The word is probably a merger of the older squeamous, from Anglo-Norman, with the dialectal sweamish, meaning faint. Neither has a clear origin beyond that.
Anglo-Norman
escoimus
Middle English
squaimous
English, today
squeamish
Built from
Origin unknown. Likely a merger of earlier squeamous (“squeamish”), from Middle English squaimous, queimous, from Anglo-Norman escoimus, escoymous, of unknown origin; and dialectal sweamish, sweemish (“faint, squeamish”), from sweam (“dizziness, sudden qualm of sickness”) and dialectal sweem (“to swoon, be faint, be overcome, feel sick”), from Middle English swemen (“to grieve, make suffer, be faint of heart”), from Old English swǣman (“to grieve, trouble, afflict”). If so, then related to swim (“to be dizzy, swoon”). See also sweam.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA