squirm
verb
- twist or wiggle from side to side
noun
No English definition recorded for this entry.
L328383 on Wikidata ↗Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /skwɜːm/ / /skwɝm/
noun
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.
- A twisting, snakelike movement of the body.
verb
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.
- To twist one's body with snakelike motions.
“The prisoner managed to squirm out of the straitjacket.”
“[…] around us there had sprung up a perfect bedlam of screams and hisses and a seething caldron of hideous reptiles, devoid of fear and filled only with hunger and with rage. They clambered, squirmed and wriggled to the deck, forcing us steadily backward, though we emptied our pistols into them.”
- 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.”
- To evade a question, an interviewer etc.