witworm

English

Etymology

From wit +‎ worm.

Noun

witworm (plural witworms)

1. (obsolete) One who, or that which, feeds on wit (possibly destroying it).
   • 1611, Ben[jamin] Jonson, Catiline His Conspiracy, London: […] [William Stansby?] for Walter Burre, →OCLC, (please specify the page):

     What hast thou done With thy poor innocent self […] Thus to come forth, so suddenly, a wit-worm?

   • 1824, Theodore Sedgwick Fay, “Editorial Miseries”, in The New York Mirror:

     Sentimental misses long for poetry— dandies crave the latest fashions— politicasters fatten on battles and revolutions— witworms want anecdotes— censors snap at editorial paragraphs— gossips devour scandal— merchants derive sustenance from ship-news, and hypochondriacs from death— old maids and bachelors smack their labia over the marriages — weather-wises look out for squalls, and pinchfists and pickpockets for the state of stocks — and so on cum multis aliis — ad infinitum.

   • 1827, Hilary Quality, edited by D. Wyseman, The Quality Papers, page 158:

     "By the flesh-hook of Satan!" cried I, "thou are as merry a witworm as ever waged war against dumpishness. […]

   • 1847 March 7, “Wit and Humor”, in The Yale Literary Magazine, volumes 12-13, page 225:

     Such a course, however, when a neighbor is at hand, with leisure, and of the same spirit, would be recommendable to none, save only to those witlings, and witsnappers, and witworms, whose jests, though highly appreciable to themselves, will not pass current among the throng.

   • 1977, Heathcote Williams, Hancock's Last Half Hour, page 19:

     ... the calembour, the scintillating jokesmith and jesting witworm who sets the table in a roar, and lays them in the aisles.

   • 2002, Bernadette McCarver Snyder, 130 Fun Facts from God's Wonder-Filled World, page 142:

     Oh, yes, you must definitely be a witworm!

   • 2013, David Stacton, People of the Book:

     What would he do were he confronted not with an example, but with the thing itself? Turn to a powder, like any other witworm? Oxenstierna had small use for scholars.

References

• “witworm”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.