Word.ws English Dictionary

screwworm

screwworm noun: a larva of a blowfly of species Cochliomyia hominivorax (New World screwworm fly) or Chrysomya bezziana (Old World screwworm fly), of tribe Chrysomyini, parasitic in animals and sometimes humans, distinctive in eating living flesh of mammals, unlike most maggots, which eat only dead flesh.

screwworm: a larva of a blowfly of species Cochliomyia hominivorax (New World screwworm fly) or Chrysomya...
Image: John Kucharski, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

screwworm (plural screwworms)

  1. A larva of a blowfly of species Cochliomyia hominivorax (New World screwworm fly) or Chrysomya bezziana (Old World screwworm fly), of tribe Chrysomyini, parasitic in animals and sometimes humans, distinctive in eating living flesh of mammals, unlike most maggots, which eat only dead flesh.
    • A sample of screwworms collected in the morning are displayed at a veterinary clinic in Tapachula, Chiapas state, Mexico on 4 July 2025. […] The government’s confirmation of a screwworm case comes just over a week after US Department of Agriculture (USDA) secretary, Brooke Rollins, traveled to...2025 August 25, “First human case of flesh-eating screwworm parasite confirmed in US”, in The Guardian, sourced from Reuters, →ISSN, archived from the original on 25 Aug 2025

Forms of screwworm

pluralscrewworms

Origin of screwworm

From screw + worm.

Words formed from screwworm

Questions about screwworm

What does screwworm mean?
Screwworm means a larva of a blowfly of species Cochliomyia hominivorax (New World screwworm fly) or Chrysomya bezziana (Old World screwworm fly), of tribe Chrysomyini, parasitic in animals and sometimes humans, distinctive in eating living flesh of mammals, unlike most maggots, which eat only dead flesh.
What part of speech is screwworm?
Screwworm is a noun.
What is the plural of screwworm?
The plural of screwworm is screwworms.

Words near screwworm in the dictionary

  1. screwtop
  2. screwtops
  3. screwup
  4. screwups
  5. screwwise
  6. screwworm
  7. screwworms
  8. screwy
  9. Scriabinian
  10. scribable
  11. scribaceous

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: screwworm (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: “screwworm.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/screwworm. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.