Squirm vs Squeamish - What's the difference?
squirm | squeamish |
To twist one’s body with snakelike motions.
* 1918 , (Edgar Rice Burroughs), Chapter IV
* 1922 , (Virginia Woolf), (w, Jacob's Room) Chapter 1
To twist in discomfort, especially from shame or embarrassment.
* 2010 , ,
To evade (a question, an interviewer etc).
(figuratively) To move in a slow, irregular motion.
* {{quote-news
, year=2011
, date=February 5
, author=Michael Kevin Darling
, title=Tottenham 2 - 1 Bolton
, work=BBC
easily bothered or upset; tending to be nauseated or nervous
As a verb squirm
is to twist one’s body with snakelike motions.As a noun squirm
is a twisting, snakelike movement of the body.As an adjective squeamish is
easily bothered or upset; tending to be nauseated or nervous.squirm
English
Verb
(en verb)- The prisoner managed to squirm out of the straitjacket.
- ...around us there had sprung up a perfect bedlam of screams and hisses and a seething caldron of hideous reptiles, devoid of fear and filled only with hunger and with rage. They clambered, squirmed and wriggled to the deck, forcing us steadily backward, though we emptied our pistols into them.
- "Throw it away, dear, do," she said, as they got into the road; but Jacob squirmed away from her...
- I recounted the embarrassing story in detail just to watch him squirm .
Questionable Content 1686: Twist in the Wind
- MARIGOLD: Should I tell them I know?
- DORA: Nah, let ’em squirm . Let’s go get some pie.
citation, page= , passage=The Dutchman then missed a retaken second spot-kick, before the Trotters hit back when Daniel Sturridge's shot squirmed under Heurelho Gomes. }}
Derived terms
* squirmage * squirmish * squirmishness * squirmySynonyms
* (twist with snakelike motions) writhe, wriggle * (twist in discomfort) fidgetsqueamish
English
Alternative forms
* sweamish, swaimish (dialectal) * squeimish, squemish, squeamous (obsolete)Adjective
(en adjective)- He might have made a good doctor, had he not been so squeamish about the sight of blood.