Other forms: worms
A worm is a long soft animal with no legs that lives in the soil. An earthworm, worms in the garden, a can of worms.
Earthworms pull leaves underground and pass soil through their bodies, which is why Darwin spent decades on them and called them among the most important animals in history. A can of worms is a mess best left unopened. In computing, a worm spreads by itself. Note that the Old English word also meant a serpent or dragon.
1nounwormA long soft legless animal living in soil.
“The blackbird pulled a worm out of the wet lawn.”
worm is an animal.
Old English wyrm meant a serpent or dragon as well as a worm. The narrowing to small crawling animals came later.
Middle English
worm
English, today
worm
Built from
From Middle English worm. From Middle English werm,wirm,worm,worme,wrim,wurm,wyrm,wyrme, from Old English weorm, wurm, wyrm, from Proto-West Germanic wurmi, from Proto-Germanic wurmiz (“worm; snake”), from Proto-Indo-European wr̥mis (“worm; larva”), possibly from wer- (“to turn”). a doublet of vermin and wyrm, the latter of which is a fairly recent borrowing directly from the Old English. computing First computer usage by John Brunner in his 1975 book The Shockwave Rider.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA