palmerworm

English

Alternative forms

• palmer-worm
• palmer worm

Etymology

palmer +‎ worm, because wandering about like a palmer.

Noun

palmerworm (plural palmerworms)

1. (archaic) Any small, terrestrial invertebrate, usually an agricultural pest and having many legs and a hairy body.
   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Joel 2:25:

     And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.

2. A gelechiid moth, Dichomeris ligulella, destructive to fruit trees.
   • 1922, Altus Lacy Quaintance, Edouard Horace Siegler, The More Important Apple Insects, page 58:

     If history repeats itself in the case of the palmerworm, fruit growers are not likely to encounter this insect in injurious numbers more than once in a lifetime, since in the past outbreaks have occurred only at intervals of […]

Translations

a grub or larva of a particular species

• Maori: whangawhanga

References

• “palmerworm”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• On etymology, see Ernest Adams, ""On the Names of Caterpillers, Snails, and Slugs," Transactions of the Philological Society, 89–112, 95 (1860).