worm
/wɝm/
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.77 in modern English
Meaning
noun
More loosely, any of various tubular invertebrates resembling annelids but not closely related to them, such as velvet worms, acorn worms, flatworms, or roundworms. See Appendix:English worms.
noun
Any creeping or crawling animal, such as a snake (cf. “dragon”; blindworm, slowworm, “legless lizard”), snail, or caterpillar.
Archaic
noun
Any creeping or crawling animal, such as a snake (cf. “dragon”; blindworm, slowworm, “legless lizard”), snail, or caterpillar.
Archaic; Informal
noun
A dragon, today especially Germanic dragon, more often of the serpentine or wingless type, for example sea serpent, but also any kind of dragon.
Archaic
noun
A dragon, today especially Germanic dragon, more often of the serpentine or wingless type, for example sea serpent, but also any kind of dragon.
Archaic
noun
A contemptible or devious being.
noun
A self-replicating program that propagates through a network by copying itself, differing from a virus which seeks to propagate by inserting its code into other executable files.
Example Sentences
- "‘Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,’ he said. ‘The only red things about them were their buttocks and they were raw. Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared.[…]’"
- "Leaning that I might eat, I stretched and clung Over the shapeless depth in which those corpses hung. A woman’s shape, now lank and cold and blue, The dwelling of the many-coloured worm, Hung there […]"
- "A forlyued cok leiþ eiren in his laste elde... and ȝif any venemous worme sittiþ on broode þerevppon in þe canyculer dayes, þerof is igendrid... a cocatrice."
- "1561, Geneva Bible, Acts 28:3-4, And when Paul had gathered a nomber of stickes, & laid them on the fyre, there came a viper out of the heat, and leapt on his hand. Now when the Barbarians sawe the worme hang on his hand, they said among them selues This man surely is a murtherer, whome, thogh he hathe escaped the sea, yet Vengeance hathe not suffred to liue."
- "[…] No, ’tis slander, Whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue Outvenoms all the worms of Nile […]"
- "When Cerberus perceived us, the great worm! His mouth he opened and displayed his tusks; Not a limb had he that was motionless."
Etymology
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /wɝm/
- British English: /wɜːm/