Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. See slowworm.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A small European lizard, Anguis fragilis, of the family Anguidæ, having a slender limbless body and tail, like a snake, rudimentary shoulder-girdle, breast-bone, and pelvis, a scaly skin, concealed ears, and small eyes furnished with movable lids: so called because supposed to be a sightless worm, a notion as erroneous as is the supposition that it is poisonous. Also called orvet and slow-worm.
Wiktionary
- n. the slowworm
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A small, burrowing, snakelike, limbless lizard (Anguis fragilis), with minute eyes, popularly believed to be blind; the slowworm; -- formerly a name for the adder.
WordNet 3.0
- n. any of the small slender limbless burrowing wormlike amphibians of the order Gymnophiona; inhabit moist soil in tropical regions
- n. small burrowing legless European lizard with tiny eyes; popularly believed to be blind
Etymologies
- From its small eyes.
Examples
“I can understand the reasons why Andy is being spoken about because he is different," he revealed, adding "Apart from his size he is also a left-footed player" lest we might conclude that this difference involved living in a fridge, communicating only via the lyrics of The Carpenters and slithering around on his belly after dark like a blindworm.”
The Guardian: Will Andy Carroll prove the difference that destroys the planet?
“I found delightful adventures in the woods—one day a blindworm and an adder fighting in a green hollow—and sometimes Mrs. Earle would be afraid to tidy the room because I had put a bottle full of newts on the mantelpiece.”
Simon & Schuster: Collected Works of W. B. Yeats Volume III Autobiographies
“It was a greenly weaving ribbon of light, a snakelike stream of glowing, phosphorescent particles that moved like a blindworm over and across the vast rocky shelf.”
Hero Of Dreams
“He might have had some kind of herb, or maybe some juice from a blindworm, to make us blind.”
Dragon on a Pedestal
“The blindworm coils where Queens have slept, nor asks”
“He waited at the station until an underground train snaked its way in like a giant blindworm, and went with it to the Temple and so to the quiet hotel he had chosen in Lincoln's Inn Fields.”
“Nevertheless we have a blindworm, to be found under logs, in woods and timber that hath lain long in a place, which some also do call (and upon better ground) by the name of slow-worms, and they are known easily by their more or less variety of striped colours, drawn long-ways from their heads, their whole bodies little exceeding a foot in length, and yet is their venom deadly.”
“Then the face disappeared with the swiftness of a blindworm popping into its burrow, and the next thing that I remember is my own voice in my own ears, saying gravely to the mainmast, 'But the air-bladder ought to have been forced out of its mouth, you know.”
The Kipling Reader Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling
“And within the grave there is no pleasure, for the blindworm battens on the root,”
“The blindworm Ignorance that slays the soul, O tarry yet!”
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