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squeamish

squea·mish

UK/ˈskwiːmɪʃ/ US/ˈskwimɪʃ/ uncommon

adjective

1.

excessively fastidious and easily disgusted

  • “too nice about his food to take to camp cooking”
  • “so squeamish he would only touch the toilet handle with his elbow”
Synonyms
Similar

Origin

Origin obscure. Likely a merger of earlier squeamous (“squeamish”), from Middle English squaimous, queimous, from Anglo-Norman escoimus, escoymous, of unknown origin; and dialectal English 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.

Related words

Word family

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.