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GERMAN · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

Qualm.

smoke, particularly when very dense or regarded as unpleasant; fume

5 characters1 syllables approx.Deutsch language

Meaning & usage

noun/kvalm/[kʋalm][kv̥alm]
  1. smoke, particularly when very dense or regarded as unpleasant; fume

    masculine · no-plural · strong
    beißender, dichter, dicker, weißer, schwarzer Qualm
    Zigarettenqualm
Where this word comes from

16th century, from Middle Low German quallem (“vapor, steam, smoke”). Cognate with Dutch kwalm. Usually considered a derivative of quellen (“to well, swell up”). Alternatively with the common Low and Central German development dw-, tw- → qu- (as in quer, Quark etc.) from Old Saxon dwalm (“benumbment, bemusement”), cognate of Old High German twalm, Old English dwolma. Further from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeuə- (“spray, swirl, whirl”). However, the documented meanings seem to speak against this.

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Qualm studioQualm workshello, Qualm

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.