squeamish
/ˈskwiːmɪʃ
/adjective
1Easily made to feel sick or disgusted: I’ve always been squeamish about bugs...
- Oddly, eating meat didn't make me feel squeamish or sick.
- The squeamish and easily offended will find a lot to complain about, but what's new?
- Most Africans have a very close relationship with the land, even the city people, who are squeamish about bugs and scared to death of gorillas.
Synonyms
easily nauseated, nervous;
(be squeamish about) be put off by, cannot stand the sight of, … makes one feel sick
1.1Having fastidious moral views; scrupulous: she was not squeamish about using her social influence in support of her son...
- Is it that the United States has grown more moral in the last 50 years - or, depending on your point of view, more squeamish?
- In their boasts, dissidents are lady-killers; in their writings, they are squeamish, priggish, and prudish.
- What interrogation tactics would make both the FBI and the CIA squeamish about their field officers' participation?
Synonyms
scrupulous, principled, conscientious, fastidious, particular, punctilious, finicky, fussy, prissy, prudish, strait-laced, honourable, upright, upstanding, high-minded, righteous, right-minded, moral, ethical
informal pernickety
Derivatives
squeamishly
- Carl Zimmer describes in his squeamishly gripping book Parasite Rex how, eventually, the barnacle fills the entire carapace of the crab, which becomes, in effect, a zombie.
- These creatures are not just squeamishly gross, but also a very real health threat.
- You squeamishly go looking for a quiet spot behind a bush to do your thing.
squeamishness
/ noun ...- By failing to make these distinctions (though you'll perhaps understand our squeamishness when it comes to these sorts of details), we've made the world seem like a much nastier and more dangerous place than it is.
- But beyond puritanical squeamishness - and the native instinct of all bureaucracies to create policies upon policies - employers have good reason to outlaw porn.
- Researcher Nathaniel Fried at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Balti said men should overcome their squeamishness and opt for a vasectomy - a far cheaper and safer operation than female sterilization.
Origin
Late Middle English: alteration of dialect squeamous, from Anglo-Norman French escoymos, of unknown origin.