Worm
The term worm /ˈwɜrm/ refers to an obsolete taxon (vermes) used by Carolus Linnaeus and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck for all non-arthropod invertebrate animals, and stems from the Old English word wyrm. Currently it is used to describe many different distantly related animals that typically have a long cylindrical tube-like body and no legs. Most animals called "worms" are invertebrates, but the term is also used for the amphibian caecilians and the slow worm Anguis, a legless burrowing lizard. Invertebrate animals commonly called "worms" include annelids (earthworms), nematodes (roundworms), platyhelminthes (flatworms), marine polychaete worms (bristle worms), marine nemertean worms ("bootlace worms"), marine Chaetognatha (arrow worms), priapulid worms, and insect larvae such as caterpillars, grubs, and maggots. Historical English-speaking cultures have used the (now deprecated) terms worm, Wurm, or wyrm to describe carnivorous reptiles ("serpents"), and the related mythical beasts dragons. The term worm can also be used as an insult or pejorative term used towards people to describe a cowardly or weak individual or individual seen as pitiable.
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Famous quotes containing the word worm:
“The worm artist
out of soil, by passage
of himself
constructing.
Castles of metaphor!”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“A worm on the ear-of-wheat,
I am yet unrepentant,
for I know how the Lord God
is about to manifest, when I,
the industrious worm,
spin my own shroud.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“A little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians.”
—William James (1842–1910)