1.  lit. A kind of maggot that destroys books by eating its way through the leaves.

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1855.  Mrs. Gatty, Parables fr. Nat., Ser. XVIII. (1809), 66. The bookworm … had just eaten his way through the back of Lord Bacon’s Advancement of Learning.

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1886.  Bookseller, 6 Nov., 1180. A living specimen of a bookworm … Book-worms are the larvæ of a small beetle (anobium.) … I discovered that many of the volumes contained living bookworms.

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  2.  fig. One who seems to find his chief sustenance in reading, one who is always poring over books.

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1599.  B. Jonson, Cynthia’s Rev., III. ii. Perverted and spoiled by a whoreson book-worm.

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a. 1736.  Pope, Lett., Wks. 1736, V. 141. I wanted but a black gown and a salary, to be as meer a bookworm as any there.

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1865.  Merivale, Rom. Emp., VIII. lxvii. 278. No sophist, no schoolman, no mere dreaming bookworm.

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