Squirm Meaning
/skwɜːm/Definition, CEFR level B2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
verbTo twist one's body with snakelike motions.
verbTo twist in discomfort, especially from shame or embarrassment.
Sentence Examples
Seeing all the worms wriggling on the corpse made me squirm all over.
Don't squirm, the doctor told patient before sticking a scary-looking needle into his arm.
Yanni managed to squirm out of Skura's grip.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The little boy started to ____ in his chair when he felt bored.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The little boy began to ____ in his seat after sitting through the long and boring speech.
Word Origin & History
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.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"[…] 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."
— 1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter IV, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, (please specify |part=I to III), New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, 1927, →OCLC:
""Throw it away, dear, do," she said, as they got into the road; but Jacob squirmed away from her […]"
— 1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, chapter 1, in Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC:
"The Dutchman then missed a retaken second spot-kick, before the Trotters hit back when Daniel Sturridge's shot squirmed under Heurelho Gomes."
— 2011 February 5, Michael Kevin Darling, “Tottenham 2 - 1 Bolton”, in BBC:
"MARIGOLD: Should I tell them I know?
DORA: Nah, let ’em squirm. Let’s go get some pie."
— 2010, Jeph Jacques, Questionable Content 1686: Twist in the Wind:
Explore More B2 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The little boy started to ____ in his chair when he felt bored.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The little boy began to ____ in his seat after sitting through the long and boring speech.