Worm-eaten

pa. pple. and ppl. a. Eaten into by a worm or worms.

1398.  Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., XVII. lxxiv. (1495), Q iij/1. Frute … yf it be not roten nother worme eten.

c. 1420.  Liber Cocorum (1862), 45. Take white pese and wasshe hom wele;… Devoyde þo worme-etone alle bydene.

1493.  Festyvall (W. de W., 1515), 139. An olde staffe of asshe that … was all worme eten.

c. 1570.  Misogonus, III. iii. 84. A neighboure of yours w^ch is payned in hir mandible w^th a wormetone toth.

1590.  Spenser, F. Q., II. ix. 57. Some made in books, some in long parchment scrolles, That were all worme-eaten, and full of canker holes.

1599.  Shaks., Much Ado, III. iii. 145. Smircht worm-eaten tapestrie.

1600.  Abbot, On Jonah, xx. 434. The worke of wormes shall not be refused, to cloath a worme-eaten body.

1653.  W. Ramesey, Astrol. Restored, 72. He found [it] in an old rotten worm-eaten book.

1679.  Rector’s Bk. Clayworth (1910), 45. Y^e beans were sound and y^e pease wormeaten.

a. 1704.  T. Brown, Walk Lond. & Westm., Wks. 1720, III. 316. Old worm-eaten Presses, whose Doors flew open on our Approach.

1827.  Clare, Sheph. Cal., 148. Then, like worm-eaten fruit, it drops and dies.

1838.  Dickens, O. Twist, xxxviii. Old worm-eaten ship timber.

1883.  J. G. Wood, in Sunday Mag., Oct., 628/2. No one ever yet found an unsound or worm-eaten nut in a squirrel’s store.

  b.  transf. Applied to organic tissue that is indented with small holes.

  In Elizabethan writers as a jocular description of a ‘grog-blossom’ nose.

1592.  Nashe, P. Penilesse, Wks. (Grosart), II. 18. A huge woorme-eaten nose, like a cluster of grapes hanging downewards.

1603.  Dekker, Wonderf. Yeare, F 1. An Antiquary might haue pickt rare matter out of his Nose, but that it was worme-eaten (yet that proued it to be an auncient Nose).

1897.  Allbutt’s Syst. Med., III. 966. The whole of the colon above the stricture was distended and worm-eaten by small ulcers. Ibid., IV. 746. A larger superficial ulcer … with irregular ‘worm-eaten’ or ‘mouse-nibbled’ margins. Ibid. (1899), VI. 550. The surface [of the bone] has a worm-eaten appearance.

  c.  fig. (of persons and things). Decayed, decrepit; antiquated, outworn.

c. 1575.  W. Wager, Longer thou livest, 329 (Brandl). You begin to be scabbie and worme eaten, It is time Salt vpon you to strow.

1589.  R. Harvey, Pl. Perc. (1590), 6. His worm-eaten Conscience.

1597.  Morley, Introd. Mus., 158. Your close in the treble part is so stale that it is almost worme eaten.

1604.  ? Dekker, Newes fr. Grauesend, Ep. Ded. A 4. That worme-eaten name of Liberall…. It’s a name of the old fashion.

1614.  Raleigh, Hist. World, I. vii. § 4. 103. And therefore … were all thinges among the Greekes (which antiquitie had worne out of knowledge) called Ogygia, which we in English commonly call (worme-eaten) or of defaced date.

1637.  Rutherford, Lett. (1671), 187. O poor fools who are beguiled with painted things … and rotten worm-eaten hopes!

1721.  Ramsay, Tartana, 362. These musty Fools Who only move by old worm-eaten Rules.

1888.  Pall Mall Gaz., 13 Sept., 5/1. The worm-eaten bibliophile.

  absol.  1730.  Pope, Lett. to Gay, 1 Oct. The employment I am fittest for—conversation with the dead, the old, and the worm-eaten.

  Hence † Worm-eatenness, worm-eaten condition.

1617.  Rider, Bibl. Schol., Caries … Rottennesse or wormeatennesse in wood.

1617.  Barbier, Janua Ling., 94. The tops of chesnut trees rot with rustic wormeatennesse.

1666.  J. Smith, Old Age, 85. By the ceasing of the teeth we must understand, all those infirmities that are incident to them by reason of age, whether looseness, hollowness, rottenness,… wormeatenness, [etc.].

1730.  Bailey (folio), Verminousness, Fulness of Worms, Worm-eatenness.