squirm
UK/skwɜːm//skwɝm/
squirm verb: to twist one's body with snakelike motions.
Verb
squirm (third-person singular simple present squirms, present participle squirming, simple past and past participle squirmed)
- To twist one's body with snakelike motions.
- The prisoner managed to squirm out of the straitjacket.
- […] around us there had sprung up a perfect bedlam of screams and hisses and a seething caldron of hideous reptiles, devoid of fear and filled only with hunger and with rage. They clambered, squirmed and wriggled to the deck, forcing us steadily backward, though we emptied our pistols into them.1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter IV, in Hugo Gernsback, editor...
- To twist in discomfort, especially from shame or embarrassment.
- I recounted the embarrassing story in detail just to watch him squirm.
- A tough question that made the press office squirm.
- Synonyms:
- fidget
- To evade a question, an interviewer etc.
Noun
squirm (plural squirms)
- A twisting, snakelike movement of the body.
squirm meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam
squirm in Tamil
- twist one’s body with snakelike motion
- நெளி neḷi
squirm in Urdu
- چالبازی کرنا, کلبلانا
squirm in Bengali
- ছটফট করা, মোচড়ানো
squirm in Malayalam
- wiggle, wriggle, writhe
- കുതറുക, കുതരുക, ഞെളിയുകയും പിരിയുകയും ചെയ്യുക, പിടയ്ക്കുക, പിടെക്കുക, പുളയുക
- shudder, wince, feel embarrassed
- ചൂളുക, അളുക്കുക, കൂസുക, കൂചുക, കൂഞ്ഞുക, ഞെട്ടിപ്പിടയുക
More languagesFewer languages
- squirm in Kannada
- ತೆವಳು, ಮೈಮುರಿ, ಮಯ್ತಿರುಚು, ವಿಲಿಗುಟ್ಟು
- squirm in Thai
- ดิ้น dîn
Examples of squirm in a sentence
- "Throw it away, dear, do," she said, as they got into the road; but Jacob squirmed away from her […]1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC...
- The Dutchman then missed a retaken second spot-kick, before the Trotters hit back when Daniel Sturridge's shot squirmed under Heurelho Gomes.2011 February 5, Michael Kevin Darling, “Tottenham 2 - 1 Bolton”, in BBC:
Synonyms of squirm
Forms of squirm
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | squirms |
| present participle | squirming |
| past participle | squirmed |
| past | squirmed |
| Noun | |
| plural | squirms |
Origin of squirm
First recorded 1690's, originally used of eels; cognate with Scots squimmer (“to wriggle, squirm”). Of uncertain origin. Compare dialectal quirm, whirm (“to disappear quickly, vanish suddenly and mysteriously”), Norwegian kverva (“to turn around, take away, remove, shrink”), from Old Norse hverfa (“to turn, vanish”). Alternatively, perhaps imitative or related to worm (in the sense of writhing movement) or swarm.
Words formed from squirm
Words that rhyme with squirm
9 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about squirm
- What does squirm mean?
- Squirm means to twist one's body with snakelike motions.
- What is squirm in Tamil?
- Squirm in Tamil is நெளி (neḷi). See Squirm meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use squirm in a sentence?
- "Throw it away, dear, do," she said, as they got into the road; but Jacob squirmed away from her […]
- What part of speech is squirm?
- Squirm can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce squirm?
- Squirm is pronounced /skwɜːm/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of squirm?
- The past tense of squirm is squirmed.
Words near squirm in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: squirm (page history and authors); squirm (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); squirm (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); squirm (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); squirm (Kannada Wiktionary) (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-squirm.ogg, en-au-squirm.ogg.
Cite this entry: “squirm.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/squirm. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.