misgiving

plural misgivings

1. countableuncountableDoubt, apprehension, a feeling of dread

   He could think of her being there, without a lurking misgiving that it would have been better if she had not come.

   1846-1848, Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son

   4 more examples

   In the night, or the gloomy chambers of the day, fears and misgivings wax strong, but out in the sunlight there is, for a time, cessation even of the terror of death.

   1900, Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie

   Having got its Act, the M.B.M. & M.J.R. apparently had misgivings about the route, in view of the very heavy engineering works that would be necessary, and on November 9, 1846, the company gave notice of a further bill for a deviated line, which was passed into law on July 22, 1847.

   1960 March, J. P. Wilson, E. N. C. Haywood, “The route through the Peak - Derby to Manchester: Part One”, in Trains Illustrated, page 149

   Zoe was so starving she had stolen a bag of her stepmother’s dreaded prawn cocktail crisps for her dinner. The rat must have been able to smell them on her fingers, and despite Zoe’s grave misgivings about the snack, which bore no relation to prawns or indeed cocktails, the rat didn’t seem to mind.

   2012, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], Ratburger, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN

   The history of cast iron in railway bridges is much more grimly chequered. Brunel's misgivings were proved prudent, tragically, in the 1879 failure of Thomas Bouch's Tay bridge (once a monument to cast iron, now a memorial to many lives lost).

   2025 March 5, Dr Joseph Brennan, “Remembering Brunel's timber viaducts”, in RAIL, number 1030, page 60

   Synonyms: doubt, apprehension