pillworm

English

Alternative forms

  • pill worm, pill-worm

Etymology

From pill +‎ worm.

Noun

pillworm (plural pillworms)

  1. (rare) Any myriapod which rolls up for protection; a galleyworm.
    • 1904, Alexander Bathgate, Dunedin and Its Neighbourhood: A Short Account of Its ..., page 68:
      Another one (Armadillo rugulosus) is endowed with the power of rolling itself up in a ball like the "pill-worm" of the Old Country
    • 1956, Mysore Agricultural Calendar and Year Book, Mysore (India:State). Dept. of Agriculture, page 151:
      Objects of the Scheme:—(1) To produce intra hissutum and hissutum barbadense hybrids (F11) possessing resistance to blackarm, red leaf blight and pillworm besides having economic and agronomic values and suitable for growing as such or by budding on perennial of stocks.
    • 1961, African Violet Magazine, volume 15, page 71:
      The PILLWORM is restless, aggressive, and nearly as destructive as, though more sophisticated than, the APHID.
    • 1972, Irwin Stambler, Shorelines of America, page 37:
      The high beach inhabitants include different kinds of periwinkles, a burrowing worm called the pill worm, and the beach hoppers that often parade along the beach in great numbers in early morning or twilight.
    • 1984, Suzanne Morris, Galveston, page 408:
      an event which happened years earlier had eaten away at the parish in his charge as a pillworm eats at a plant.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “pillworm”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

See also

References

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