Word.ws English Dictionary

whealworm

whealworm is the alternative form of wheal-worm.

Meaning of wheal-worm

Noun

wheal-worm (plural wheal-worms)

  1. (archaic) Any of various insects or arachnids the bites of which produce raised sores.
    • It may be ſome will think it impoſſible for theſe Wheal-worms to breed between the eyes; but we ſee it is ſo, and we finde it was done ſo formerly1658, Edward Topsell, The History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, London: E. Cotes for G. Sawbridge, XXIV Of little Lice called Syrones, Acari, and Tineæ, or Hand-worms, or Mites in living...
  2. (archaic) A harvest mite, Trombicula sp.
    • wheal-worm, n 1. The itch-mite acarus scabiei 2. The acarine Leptus autumnalis, or some similar harvest-bug: so named from the wheals or pimples left by its bite. See cut under harvest-mite.1895, William Dwight Whitney with Benjamin Eli Smith, The Century Dictionary: An Encyclopedic Lexicon of the English Language, volume 8, New York: The Century Co., →OCLC, page 6888
  3. (obsolete) A mite of species Acarus autumnalis, synonym of Neotrombicula autumnalis
    • ACARUS AUTUMNALIS. Harvest-bug. Mower's Mite. Wheal-worm. Rouget. The acarus autumnalis is scarcely larger than the acarus scabiei1865, Sir Erasmus Wilson, “Malis, or cutaneous vermination”, in On Diseases of the Skin, Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, →OCLC, page 277
    Synonyms:
    harvest bug, scarlet mite

Forms of whealworm

pluralwhealworms

Questions about whealworm

What is whealworm the alternative form of?
Whealworm is the alternative form of wheal-worm.

Words near whealworm in the dictionary

  1. Wheal Busy
  2. Wheal Rose
  3. wheal-worm
  4. wheal-worms
  5. wheals
  6. whealworm
  7. whealworms
  8. whear
  9. wheat
  10. wheat and chessboard problem
  11. wheat and tares

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whealworm (page history and authors); wheal-worm (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:

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