Squeamish

//ˈskwiːmɪʃ// adj

adj ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Easily shocked, sickened or frightened; tending to be nauseated or nervous; oversensitive.

    "He might have made a good doctor, had he not been so squeamish at the sight of blood."

  2. 2
    Averse or reluctant.
Adjective
  1. 1
    excessively fastidious and easily disgusted wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
fastidiousairsickbarfybashfulbogglingcarsick

Example

More examples

"Tom was very squeamish and would pass out at the sight of blood."

Etymology

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.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.