Palmerworm
noun
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 Any small, terrestrial invertebrate, usually an agricultural pest and having many legs and a hairy body. archaic
"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.
"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[…]"
Example
More examples"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."
Etymology
From palmer + worm, because wandering about like a palmer.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.