worms

Noun

worm (plural worms)

1. A generally tubular invertebrate of the annelid phylum; an earthworm.
   • ‘Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,’ he said. ‘The only red things about them were their buttocks and they were raw. Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick beasts whose byres had never been cleared.[…]’1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 7, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC
2. More loosely, any of various tubular invertebrates resembling annelids but not closely related to them, such as velvet worms, acorn worms, flatworms, or roundworms. See Appendix:English worms.
   • Leaning that I might eat, I stretched and clung
     Over the shapeless depth in which those corpses hung.
     A woman’s shape, now lank and cold and blue,
     The dwelling of the many-coloured worm,
     Hung there […]1817 December, Percy Bysshe Shelley, “The Revolt of Islam. […]”, in [Mary] Shelley, editor, The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. […], volume I, London: Edward Moxon […], published 1839, →OCLC...
3. (archaic, poetic) Any creeping or crawling animal, such as a snake (cf. “dragon”; blindworm, slowworm, “legless lizard”), snail, or caterpillar.
   • A forlyued cok leiþ eiren in his laste elde... and ȝif any venemous worme sittiþ on broode þerevppon in þe canyculer dayes, þerof is igendrid... a cocatrice.a. 1398, John Trevisa, transl. Bartholomeus Anglicus as De Proprietatibus Rerum (MS BL Add. 27944), Vol. I, p. 628
   1. (archaic, broadly, informal, poetic) A maggot or any other insect larva with similar shape and behavior.
      • Those little wriggling worms are the larvae of flies who laid eggs here.
4. (archaic, poetic) A dragon, today especially Germanic dragon, more often of the serpentine or wingless type, for example sea serpent, but also any kind of dragon.
   • a. 1398, John Trevisa, transl. Bartholomeus Anglicus as De Proprietatibus Rerum (MS BL Add. 27944), Vol. I, p. 628:

   Synonyms:

   wyrm

   1. (archaic, poetic) Either a mythical "dragon" (especially wingless), a gigantic sea serpent, or a creature that resembles a Mongolian death worm.

See all 30 meanings of worm