Superworm

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The grub of a beetle in the genus Zophobas, especially as a food item.

    "To find out, Dr. Rinke and his colleagues grew three groups of superworms in the lab. One group ate bran, one ate blocks of polystyrene and the third ate nothing. (The experiments were temporarily halted by hungry superworms’ tendency to turn cannibal; giving each unfed superworm its own private space allowed the study to continue.)"

Example

More examples

"To find out, Dr. Rinke and his colleagues grew three groups of superworms in the lab. One group ate bran, one ate blocks of polystyrene and the third ate nothing. (The experiments were temporarily halted by hungry superworms’ tendency to turn cannibal; giving each unfed superworm its own private space allowed the study to continue.)"

Etymology

From super- + worm.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.