earworm

Noun

earworm (plural earworms)

1. A tune that keeps replaying in one's head or that one keeps thinking about, especially if unwanted.
   • The chorus [of "Meeting in the Ladies Room" by Klymaxx] spawned an earworm so potent that women still mutter it as they exit for a bathroom break twenty years later.2005, “Klymaxx: Meeting in the Ladies Room (Constellation, 1984)”, in Kim Cooper, David Smay, editors, Lost in the Grooves: Scram’s Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed, New York, N.Y....
   • "It's been haunting me," she said. / "Yeah, well," he said, weakly. "Sometimes tunes do that." [...] "I don't mean that I heard it once before and caught an earworm. [...]"2005, Brain Stableford, chapter 2, in Kiss the Goat: A Twenty-first Century Ghost Story, Holicong, Pa.: Prime Books, →ISBN, pages 15–16

   Synonyms:

   brainworm

2. (archaic) An earwig; an insect of the order Dermaptera.
   • Earwig, [...] The ear-worm or grub, a well-known insect, with large transparent wings, which eats fruit and flower-leaves, and has been erroneously supposed to creep into the human brain through the ear; [...]1865, John Ogilvie, “Earwig”, in The Student’s English Dictionary, Etymological, Pronouncing, & Explanatory: […], London; Edinburgh: Blackie and Son, […], →OCLC, page 270, column 2
   • Foreign Bodies in the Ear. [...] The ear-worm (forficula auricula), so much dreaded by people, occasions no special danger, but behaves in the ear in as harmless a manner as all other living animalcula of that calibre.1870, Alfred Vogel, translated by H. Raphael, A Practical Treatise of the Diseases of Children. […], New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, […], →OCLC, page 435