worming

Verb

worm (third-person singular simple present worms, present participle worming, simple past and past participle wormed)

1. (transitive) To make (one's way) with a crawling motion.
   • We wormed our way through the underbrush.
2. (intransitive) To move with one's body dragging the ground.
   • Inch by inch I wormed along the secret passageway, flat to the ground, not once raising my head, hardly daring to pull a full breath[…].1919, William Joseph Long, How animals talk: and other pleasant studies of birds and beast
3. (figuratively, intransitive) To work one's way by artful or devious means.
   • When debates and fretting jealousy / Did worm and work within you more and more, / Your colour faded.[1633], George Herbert, edited by [Nicholas Ferrar], The Temple. Sacred Poems, and Private Ejaculations, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: […] Thomas Buck and Roger Daniel; and are to be sold by Francis...
4. (figuratively, transitive) To work (one's way or oneself) (into) gradually or slowly; to insinuate.
   • He wormed his way into the organization.
5. (often) To effect, remove, drive, draw, or the like, by slow and secret means.
   • They […]find themselves wormed out of all power.1731, Jonathan Swift, The Presbyterians Plea of Merit
6. (figuratively, transitive) To drag out of, to get information that someone is reluctant or unwilling to give (through artful or devious means or by pleading or asking repeatedly).
   • They[…]wormed things out of me that I had no desire to tell.1849 May – 1850 November, Charles Dickens, chapter 17, in The Personal History of David Copperfield, London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1850, →OCLC

See all 30 meanings of worm