a. [f. WORM sb. + -Y1. Cf. MHG. wurmic, -ec, G. wurmig, Du. wormig.]
1. Attacked, gnawed or bored by worms or grubs; worm-eaten.
c. 1430. Pilgr. Lyf Manhode, II. cxxxiii. (1869), 128. I am a wormy wilowh; who so leneth to me is lost.
1562. Legh, Armorie (1568), 120 b. Studiously keping those monuments from wormie wemes.
1611. Cotgr., Vereux, wormie, full of wormes.
1708. Ozell, trans. Boileau’s Lutrin, 54. The wormy Boards, by Time’s corroding Spight disjoin’d.
1756. Mrs. Calderwood, in Coltness Collect. (Maitland Club), 213. All the fruit in that country is very wormy, and some of the finest nuts had a great worm in the kirnall.
1847. Emerson, Poems, Woodnotes, II. 307. And thou,—go burn thy wormy pages.
1848. Dickens, Dombey, lvii. An old brown, panelled, dusty vestry,… where the wormy registers diffuse a smell like faded snuff.
1864. Lowell, Fireside Trav., 176. We have picked nearly every apple (wormy or otherwise)
transf. 1833. in New Statist. Acc. Scotl. (1845), III. Selkirk, 41. The … herbage on the hills … was destroyed by a caterpillar in 1762, long called the wormy year.
b. fig. = WORM-EATEN c.
1611. Coryate’s Crudities, Panegyr. Verses, c 5 b. Old wormy age that in thy mustie writs Of former fooles records the present wits.
1908. Hardy, Dynasts, III. VII. viii. 343. Europe’s wormy dynasties rerobe Themselves in their old gilt.
c. Arch. = VERMICULATED 1 c.
1823. [see VERMICULATED 1 c].
2. Of the body, its parts and secretions: Infested or affected with worms, itch-mites, etc. Of fish: Lousy (U.S.).
1599. A. M., trans. Gabelhouer’s Bk. Physicke, 362/1. An oyntment for the Wormye, and itchinge Handes.
1600. Surflet, Countrie Farme, II. xlii. 255. The iuice thereof dropped into wormie eares, doth kill the wormes that is in them.
1625. Hart, Anat. Ur., II. viii. 105. What would … he presage by such a wormie vrine?
1679. Trapham, Disc. Health Jamaica, 103. Children the chief subjects of Worms and wormy Slime.
1707. Sloane, Jamaica, I. 140. It is used by Chirurgeons in putrid and wormy ulcers.
1766. Compl. Farmer, s.v. Ascarides, The horses that breed ascarides are, above all others, subject to slime and wormy matter.
1860. Encycl. Brit. (ed. 8), XXI. 974/2. The poor of Scotland … are not more wormy than the better fed poor of England.
1884. Springfield (Mass.) Wheelmen’s Gaz., Nov., 110/3. The stream was fairly alive with trout but the large ones were wormy.
3. Of earth, soil, the grave, etc.: Infested with worms, full of worms.
1590. Shaks., Mids. N., III. ii. 384. Damned spirits all … Alreadie to their wormie beds are gone.
1625. Milton, Death fair Infant, 31. Yet can I not perswade me thou art dead … Or that thy beauties lie in wormie bed.
1631. W. Lisle, Faire Æthiopian, x. 176. The men of Sere, Who brought the King two silken robes to weare, of daintie sleaue drawne from their wormie trees.
1686. Plot, Staffordsh., 345. Loose wormey ground.
1814. Wordsw., Excurs., III. 281. Feelingly sweet is stillness after storm, Though under covert of the wormy ground!
1838. De Quincey, Shaks., Wks. 1890, IV. 76. The wormy grave brought into antagonism with the scenting of the early dawn.
1852. Hawthorne, Blithedale Rom., II. iv. 71. Birds … busily scratched their food out of the wormy earth.
transf. 1820. Keats, Isabella, xlix. Wherefore all this wormy circumstance? Why linger at the yawning tomb so long?
4. Resembling a worm; worm-like.
Formerly in techn. terms, esp. Anat.; as wormy body [trans. corpus lumbricosum: see WORM sb. 11 a], the epididymis; wormy process = vermiform process (VERMIFORM 3 b).
1545. Raynalde, Byrth Mankynde, I. xi. (1552), 23 b. When thys foresayd wormye body hath attayned to the myddle regyon … of thee stone, it … is no more … thycke wrethed, but playne, smoth, and round.
1615. Crooke, Body of Man, 477. The anterior and posterior processes of the braine, called vermi-formes or the wormy processes.
1634. T. Johnson, Parey’s Wks., VI. xxix. 222. The 4. other [muscles of the hand] are called, by reason of their figure, the Lumbrici or wormy muscles.
a. 1682. Sir T. Browne, Tracts (1683), 60. Pliny … calls it Coccus Scolecius, or the Wormy Berry.
1856. Mrs. Browning, Aur. Leigh, I. 220. A weary, wormy darkness, spurred i’ the flank With flame, that it should eat and end itself Like some tormented scorpion.
1876. Morris, Æneids, VII. 351. The dreadful wormy thing Seemed the wrought gold about her neck [fit tortile collo aurum ingens coluber].
1888. Harper’s Mag., Aug., 327. With fleshy, brilliant, long, wormy feelers instead of fins.
1895. Mrs. B. M. Croker, Village Tales (1896), 152. Lumps of sticky cocoanut and deliciously long, wormy native sweets.
b. fig. Grovelling; earthy; crooked, tortuous.
1640. Bp. Reynolds, Passions, xxxvii. 459. Hereby wee are brought to a Just Contempt of sordid and wormie Affections. Ibid., xxxviii. 499. To be of a creeping and wormy disposition,… to raise the Soule unto no higher Contemplations, than Base and Worldly.
1662. J. Chandler, Van Helmont’s Oriat., 353. I have constantly considered the light of the Sun married as a husband to the Splendour of the Glo-worm;… one Heavenly and constant; but the other wormy or corruptible.
1868. Browning, Ring & Bk., VII. 669. That is the fruit of all such wormy ways, The indirect, the unapproved of God: You cannot find their author’s end and aim.
5. Of or pertaining to worms. poet.
1801. Southey, Thalaba, IX. xxiii. Next with naked hand, She pluck’d the boughs of the manchineel; And of the wormy wax she took, That, from the perforated tree forced out, Bewray’d its insect-parent’s work within.
1842. Hood, Elm Tree, III. 351. With sudden fear her wormy quest The Thrush abruptly quits.
