wormridden

English

Alternative forms

• worm-ridden

Etymology

worm +‎ ridden

Adjective

wormridden (comparative more wormridden, superlative most wormridden)

1. Full of or parasitized by worms.
   • 1890 March 26, “Legislation Against the Gypsy Moth”, in Garden and Forest, page 150:

     […] it has been again and again demonstrated that with a little care and slight expense an Apple orchard can be easily preserved from the attacks of caterpillars. But when a few keep these pests away by the use of simple preventives, their careless neighbors take no precautions and suffer their shade-trees and orchards to be worm-ridden.

   • 1922, Frank Tannenbaum, Wall Shadows: A Study in American Prisons‎^[1], New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, Chapter IV, Part III, p. 144:

     The stone is new and white, the plans are penciled upon paper still unspoiled; but the spirit, the idea, the belief, the ideology, in which these buildings are being reared, are old, worm-ridden, petrified.

   • 1959, Richard Harwood, “East Kentucky’s Mountain—No. 3.—Mountain Areas Make Progress in War on Sickness, Poverty, Dirt,” Louisville Times, 18 February, 1959, cited in U.S. Senate, 86th Congress, Session 1, Area Redevelopment Act. Hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on Banking and Currency, p. 650,^[2]

     The children inside are wormridden and indescribably filthy.

   • 1999, J. M. Coetzee, chapter 8, in Disgrace, New York: Penguin, published 2000, page 73:

     Through a window he glimpses the Shaws’ back yard: an apple tree dropping wormridden fruit, rampant weeds, an area fenced in with galvanized-iron sheets, wooden pallets, old tyres, where chickens scratch around and what looks uncommonly like a duiker snoozes in a corner.