Word.ws English Dictionary

witworm

witworm noun: one who, or that which, feeds on wit (possibly destroying it).

Noun

witworm (plural witworms)

  1. (obsolete) One who, or that which, feeds on wit (possibly destroying it).
    • What hast thou done With thy poor innocent self […]Thus to come forth, so suddenly, a wit-worm?1611, Ben[jamin] Jonson, Catiline His Conspiracy, London: […] [William Stansby?] for Walter Burre, →OCLC, (please specify the page)
    • Sentimental misses long for poetry— dandies crave the latest fashions— politicasters fatten on battles and revolutions— witworms want anecdotes— censors snap at editorial paragraphs— gossips devour scandal— merchants derive sustenance from ship-news, and hypochondriacs from death— old maids and...1824, Theodore Sedgwick Fay, “Editorial Miseries”, in The New York Mirror

Examples of witworm in a sentence

  • "By the flesh-hook of Satan!" cried I, "thou are as merry a witworm as ever waged war against dumpishness. […]1827, Hilary Quality, edited by D. Wyseman, The Quality Papers, page 158:
  • ... the calembour, the scintillating jokesmith and jesting witworm who sets the table in a roar, and lays them in the aisles.1977, Heathcote Williams, Hancock's Last Half Hour, page 19:
  • Oh, yes, you must definitely be a witworm!2002, Bernadette McCarver Snyder, 130 Fun Facts from God's Wonder-Filled World, page 142:
  • Turn to a powder, like any other witworm?2013, David Stacton, People of the Book:

Forms of witworm

pluralwitworms

Origin of witworm

From wit + worm.

Questions about witworm

What does witworm mean?
Witworm means one who, or that which, feeds on wit (possibly destroying it).
How do you use witworm in a sentence?
"By the flesh-hook of Satan!" cried I, "thou are as merry a witworm as ever waged war against dumpishness. […]
What part of speech is witworm?
Witworm is a noun.
What is the plural of witworm?
The plural of witworm is witworms.

Words near witworm in the dictionary

  1. witwantoned
  2. witwantoning
  3. witwantons
  4. Witwatersrand
  5. Witwer
  6. witworm
  7. witworms
  8. witz-choura
  9. witz-chouras
  10. witzchoura
  11. witzchouras

Source and license

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