Pl. teredines, teredos. [L. terēdo, ad. Gr. τερηδών wood-gnawing worm, f. τερ-, root of τείρειν to rub hard, wear away, bore.]
1. Zool. A genus of lamellibranch boring mollusks; esp. the ship-worm, T. navalis, well known for its destruction of submerged timbers in ships, piers, sea-dikes, etc., by boring into the wood.
In accordance with the etymology, the name was formerly applied vaguely to any species of worm or larva that wears its way into wood; the ship-worm was at first supposed to be a worm, and was only in 1733 recognized as a mollusk.
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., XVII. xxiii. (Bodl. MS.). Cedre … is neuer destroied wiþ mowȝte noþer wiþ terredo þat is þe tree worme. Ibid., XVIII. cvi. Þe worme teredo is a litel worme of a tree,… and freteþ & gnaweþ moche hard treen.
1616. T. Adams, Soul’s Sickness, Wks. 1861, I. 505. The body’s infirmities … are few and scant, if compared to the soul’s, which being a better piece of timber, hath the more teredines breeding in it.
1654. Trapp, Comm. Jonah, iv. There is a worm lies couchant in every gourd to smite it, a teredo to waste it.
1707. Mortimer, Husb. (1721), II. 77. The Teredo … and other Worms ying between the Body and the Bark.
1791. E. Darwin, Bot. Gard., I. 123. Meets fell Teredo, as he mines the keel With beaked head.
1839. G. Roberts, Dict. Geol., s.v., The shield of the Teredo furnished Mr. Brunel with the idea for the shield used in the Thames Tunnel.
1850. Miss Pratt, Comm. Things Sea-side, iii. 202. The teredo works with astonishing rapidity, and will completely riddle a hard and sound piece of wood, in the space of five or six weeks.
1857. E. C. Otté, trans. De Quatrefages’ Rambles Nat., II. viii. 232. The Hermellas of Guettary and the Teredos of Saint Sebastian were admirably adapted for experiments on artificial fecundation.
1879. A. R. Wallace, Australas., x. 209. The jarrah…, an almost indestructible timber, which is free from the attacks of teredo and termites.
1879. E. P. Wright, Anim. Life, 562. The teredo was first recognised as a bivalve mollusc by Sellius, who wrote an elaborate treatise on the subject in 1733.
fig. 1823. Sir D. Brewster, in Home Life (1869), viii. if some teredo of an engineer cut out a tunnel beneath.
1861. W. H. Russell, in Times, 23 Sept. Others of his colleagues … are the teredos of every plank in the Ship of State.
2. transf. ‘Any disease in plants produced by the boring of insects’ (Treas. Bot., 1866).
