A woman and her 10-year-old daughter are looking for a word that describes being excited but anxious. It’s not exactly twitterpated, and the Southernismlike a worm in hot ashes is vivid, but a phrase and not a single word. If a single word for...
“The worm has turned” suggests a reversal of fortune, particularly the kind of situation in which a meek person begins behaving more confidently or starts defending himself. In other words, even the lowliest of creatures will still...
If you say, “The worm has turned,” it means you’ve lost patience. Grant and Martha explain that this expression goes back to the old proverb “Tread on a worm and it will turn.” This is part of a complete episode.
grunt v.— «Gary Revell gets up every morning before sunrise, heads into the woods and grunts. Not because it’s so early. It’s the term for coaxing worms from the ground by the hundreds to be scooped up and plopped in a tin can until he...
worm grunting n.— «Earthworms are sensitive to low-frequency vibrations. These drive some types of earthworms to the surface, and in the southeastern US is used in a practice known as “worm grunting,” by scraping a piece of metal on...
worm n.— «“Everyone thinks they’re going to go to college, but we’re all back in the oil fields doing what our dads did,” says one rookie, called a “worm” in roughneck parlance. “I was going to do big things and...