(wûrm) noun
1. A small, legless, invertebrate crawling animal, with an elongated, soft, and usually naked body, as a flatworm, roundworm, or annelid. ♦ Collateral adjective: vermicular.
2. A small creeping animal with short or undeveloped feet, as an insect larva, a grub, angleworm, etc.
3. Figuratively, that which suggests the action or habit of a worm as eating away or as an agent of decay or destruction, as remorse, death, etc.
4. A despicable or despised person; also, a feeble mortal.
5. Something conceived to be like a worm.
6. A screw thread.
7. A worm screw.
8. The spiral part of a corkscrew.
9. A spiral part in a still.
10. An organ or part that resembles a worm in shape, as the lytta of the dog or the vermiform process.
11. plural An intestinal disorder due to the presence of parasitic worms.
12. The windings of a log road made to lessen the steepness of a grade.
13. The zigzag course of a log fence or a rail fence.
—v.t.
1. To insinuate (oneself or itself) in a wormlike manner; effect as by crawling: with in or into: to worm one's way.
2. To draw forth by artful means, as a secret: with out.
3. To remove worms from.
4. To wind yarn, etc., along (a rope) so as to fill up the grooves between the strands.
5. To remove the lytta or worm from, as a dog.
—v.i.
6. To move or progress slowly and stealthily. [OE wyrm]
—worm′er noun

(vrm), Olaus,
1588–1654, Danish anatomist and physician.