different between maggot vs woodworm

English

Etymology

From Middle English magot, magotte, probably Anglo-Norman alteration of maddock (“worm", "maggot”), originally a diminutive form of a base represented by Old English maþa (Scots mathe), from Frankish *maþ?, from common Proto-Germanic *maþô, from the Proto-Indo-European root *mat, which was used in insect names, equivalent to made +? -ock. Near-cognates include Dutch made, German Made and Swedish mask.

The use of maggot to mean a fanciful or whimsical thing derives from the folk belief that a whimsical or crotchety person had maggots in his or her brain.

Pronunciation

• enPR: m?g'?t, IPA^(key): /?mæ??t/

Noun

maggot (plural maggots)

1. A soft, legless larva of a fly or other dipterous insect, that often eats decomposing organic matter. [from 15th c.]
2. (derogatory) A worthless person. [from 17th c.]

   Drop and give me fifty, maggot.

3. (now archaic, regional) A whimsy or fancy. [from 17th c.]
   • 1620, John Fletcher, Women Pleased, III.iv.

     Are you not mad, my friend? What time o' th' moon is't? / Have not you maggots in your brain?

   • 1778, Frances Burney, Journals & Letters, Penguin 2001, p. 100:

     ‘I am ashamed of him! how can he think of humouring you in such maggots!’
4. (slang) A fan of the American metal band Slipknot.

Synonyms

• (soft legless larva): grub

Derived terms

Related terms

• mawk
• mawkish

Translations

English

Wikispecies

Etymology

wood +? worm

Noun

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,^[1]

     […] 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,^[2]

     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,^[3]

     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
2. A shipworm, a worm-like mollusk in the family Teredinidae that feeds on wood underwater in saltwater.

Synonyms

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

Translations

Anagrams

• Wormwood, wormwood