woodworm

wood +‎ worm

woodworm (countable and uncountable, plural woodworms)

1. Any of many beetle larvae that bore into wood.
   • 1599, Simon Harward, “A Displaying of the wilfull deuises of wicked and vaine worldlings” in Three Sermons, London: Richard Johns,

     […] Chrisostome doth compaire enuie to the wood worm which though it doe breede in the tymber, yet it doth consume & waste the tymber, as enuie springing of the heart doth putrifie and vtterly eat vp the heart.

   • 1872, Robert Louis Stevenson, letter to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson dated July 29, 1872, in Sidney Colvin (editor), The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, New York: Scribner, 1917, Volume I, p. 45,

     There was only one contretemps during the whole interview—the arrival of another visitor, in the shape (surely) the last of God’s creatures, a wood-worm of the most unnatural and hideous appearance, with one great striped horn stucking out of his nose like a boltsprit. If there are many wood-worms in Germany, I shall come home.

   • 1992, Colm Tóibín, The Heather Blazing Penguin, 1994, Chapter Two, p. 25,

     His father met a man who said that he had the figure from a ship which went aground near Blackwater Head. It would have to be treated for woodworm, he said.

   1. Anobium punctatum

• (any wood-boring beetle larvae): deathwatch beetle
• (Anobium punctatum): furniture beetle

• Wormwood, wormwood