Word.ws English Dictionary

nightcrawler

nightcrawler noun: an earthworm of the species Lumbricus terrestris, known for its large size and nocturnal surfacings.

nightcrawler: an earthworm of the species Lumbricus terrestris, known for its large size and nocturnal surfacings
Image: Donald Hobern from Copenhagen, Denmark, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

nightcrawler (plural nightcrawlers)

  1. An earthworm of the species Lumbricus terrestris, known for its large size and nocturnal surfacings.
  2. (Northern-US, US, Western) More generally, any arbitrarily large earthworm, especially those favored in angling.
  3. A person or creature who prowls in the night-time.
    • Arc lights slashed the cool air along the neon facades of bars and after-hours clubs. Street musicians shrilled. And the nameless nightcrawlers huddled in doorways […]1995, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Robert E. Weinberg, Martin Harry Greenberg, 100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories (page 147)

Forms of nightcrawler

pluralnightcrawlers

Origin of nightcrawler

From night + crawler.

Questions about nightcrawler

What does nightcrawler mean?
Nightcrawler means an earthworm of the species Lumbricus terrestris, known for its large size and nocturnal surfacings.
What part of speech is nightcrawler?
Nightcrawler is a noun.
What is the plural of nightcrawler?
The plural of nightcrawler is nightcrawlers.

Words near nightcrawler in the dictionary

  1. nightclubbing
  2. nightclubby
  3. nightclublike
  4. nightclubs
  5. nightcore
  6. nightcrawler
  7. nightcrawlers
  8. nightdream
  9. nightdreaming
  10. nightdreams
  11. nightdress

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nightcrawler (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “nightcrawler.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nightcrawler. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.