angleworm

English

WOTD – 22 August 2015

Alternative forms

  • angle worm, angle-worm

Etymology

From angle +‎ worm.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈæŋ.ɡəlˌwɜɹm/
  • Audio (Australia):(file)

Noun

angleworm (plural angleworms)

  1. (chiefly US) An earthworm, used as or destined to be used as bait to catch fish. [from 18th c.]
    • a. 1887 (date written), Emily Dickinson, “In the Garden”, in Mabel Loomis Todd and T[homas] W[entworth] Higginson, editors, Poems, Second Series, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, published 1891, page 140:
      A bird came down the walk : / He did not know I saw ; / He bit an angle-worm in halves / And ate the fellow, raw.
    • 1975, Larry Woiwode, Beyond the Bedroom Wall, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, page 192:
      [B]eneath their surface—now and then breaking through a reflection, revealed when the pools dried—were salamanders, newts, and tangled clumps of angleworms.

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