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squirm

verb
/skwɜːm/UK/skwɝm/US

Etymology

First recorded 1690's, originally used of eels; cognate with Scots squimmer (“to wriggle, squirm”). Of uncertain origin. Compare dialectal quirm, whirm (“to disappear quickly, vanish suddenly and mysteriously”), Norwegian kverva (“to turn around, take away, remove, shrink”), from Old Norse hverfa (“to turn, vanish”). Alternatively, perhaps imitative or related to worm (in the sense of writhing movement) or swarm.

  1. derived from hverfa — “to turn, vanish”
  2. derived from kverva — “to turn around, take away, remove, shrink”
  3. derived from squimmer — “to wriggle, squirm”

Definitions

  1. To twist one's body with snakelike motions.

    • The prisoner managed to squirm out of the straitjacket.
    • "Throw it away, dear, do," she said, as they got into the road; but Jacob squirmed away from her […]

  2. To twist in discomfort, especially from shame or embarrassment.

    • I recounted the embarrassing story in detail just to watch him squirm.
    • MARIGOLD: Should I tell them I know? DORA: Nah, let ’em squirm. Let’s go get some pie.

  3. To evade a question, an interviewer etc.

  4. ›+ 1 more definition

    1. A twisting, snakelike movement of the body.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for squirm. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA