ppl. a. [f. WORM v. and sb. + -ED.]
1. Eaten into or bored by worms; infested with worms.
1846. A. Young, Naut. Dict., 371. Wormed, the state of timber or plank when a number of internal cavities are made in it by a particular kind of worm, called the Teredo navalis, that abounds chiefly in tropical climates.
1853. G. Johnston, Nat. Hist. E. Bord., I. 96. Old bushes may generally be seen growing, all knaggy and wormed, about decaying onsteads.
1860. Encycl. Brit. (ed. 8), XXI. 976/1. There is great reason to believe that some inflammatory action of the liver, of the eye, and of other wormed viscus, precedes the evolution of parasites in them.
1883. R. Bridges, Prometheus, 102. Then in the ruined dwellings and old tombs He dug, unbedding from the wormed ooze Vessels and tools of trade and husbandry.
1913. Masefield, Daffodil Fields, III. Wormed hard-wood piles were driv’n in the river bank.
2. Formed with a screw-thread. Also in parasynthetic combinations = furnished with a (specified) number of screw-threads.
1683. Moxon, Mech. Exerc., Printing, xi. ¶ 1. 62. A Three-Worm’d Spindle comes faster and lower down than a four-Worm’d Spindle.
1884. Pall Mall Gaz., 8 Aug., 11/1. Two perpendicular bars of iron are firmly fixed at B B, the upper portion of each of them deeply wormed for a screw. When the silo is full, planks are laid lengthwise over its whole surface, through which the wormed ends of the iron bars protrude.
