wormhole

Etymology

It is a compound from English worm + hole,^[2][3][4] also written with a hyphen.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

A hole made by a burrowing worm or insect in wood, fruit, books and the like: 1594, in Shakespeare's Lucrece.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates the word to 1593,^[5] Etymonline to the 1590s^[3] and Dictionary.com to 1585–95.^[4]

Semantic evolution

For more than three centuries the word meant only a hole bored by a worm or larva, in timber, fruit, cloth or paper.^[2][5][3] In 1957 the physicists Misner and Wheeler used it for a hypothetical connection between widely separated regions of space-time,^[2][3] pictured as a long, thin tunnel through which distant points in space and time are joined.^[5][6] Dictionary.com describes it as a passage between a black hole and a white hole.^[4]

Timeline

• 1594 – a hole made by a burrowing worm or insect.^[2][5]
• 1957 – in physics, a hypothetical link between distant regions of space-time.^[2][3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A hole made by a worm or larva boring into wood, fruit, cloth or paper: The old beams were riddled with wormholes.^[6][5][2]
2. (physics) A hypothetical tunnel in the geometry of space-time that would connect distant parts of the universe.^[6][5][2]

Word family

• wormholed

Related words

• worm
• hole

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins