“unsettled, easily upset (especially of stomachs), uneasy, scrupulous (especially of consciences)”

We should think of Shakespeare whenever we feel nauseous, because Agrippa’s reference to Rome being “queasy” with Antony’s insolence is the first recorded use of the modern sense (Antony and Cleopatra III.vi.20). There’s a similar use in Much Ado About Nothing, when Don Pedro describes Benedick’s “quick wit and his queasy stomach” (II.i.355); the gloss here is “delicate, fastidious”. The sense of “unease” is present in the noun, too, in Shakespare’s only use, when Morton describes Hotspur and the other rebels as fighting “with queasiness” (Henry IV Part Two I.i.196). With such uses all familiar, it would be easy to assume that Shakespeare’s remaining use would be the same - but we would be wrong. When Edmund reflects in King Lear, “I have one thing of a queasy question Which I must act” (II.i.17), it means “uncertain, hazardous”, or possibly “ticklish”. He isn’t feeling unwell at all.

David Crystal

David Crystal is the author, with Ben Crystal, of Shakespeare’s Words, published by Penguin