squeamish
/ˈskwiːmɪʃ/adjective
squeamish is spelled S-Q-U-E-A-M-I-S-H. The wrong spelling people search most is squeemish: about 40 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 13 of all searches for the word. Squeamish is an adjective meaning “Easily shocked, sickened or frightened; tending to be nauseated or nervous; oversensitive”.
How many letters and syllables are in squeamish?
| Letters | 9: S-Q-U-E-A-M-I-S-H |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | about once in every 2 million words; the 45,363rd most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, squeemish, about 40 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell squeamish?
Squeamish is spelled S-Q-U-E-A-M-I-S-H. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 13 of the searches for squeamish in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is squeamish?
Squeamish appears about once in every 2 million words in written English, the 45,363rd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce squeamish?
- /ˈskwiːmɪʃ/
Squeamish has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-squeamish.ogg, LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-squeamish.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of squeamish
- more squeamish comparative
- most squeamish superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does squeamish mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 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
Averse or reluctant.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Squeamish in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense easily shocked, sickened or frightened; tending to be nauseous or nauseated:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| German | empfindlich, zimperlich |
| Spanish | remilgado, quisquilloso, aprensivo, asquiento, impresionable, afectable |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does squeamish come from?
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.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).