muck-worm n.
1. a person of the lowest origin.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Hey for Honesty II i: Ha, you old muck-worms! | |
| The Committee II i: These muck-worms will have Earth enough to stop their mouths with one day. | |
 | Contempt of the Clergy in Arber Garner VII 298: It is a great hazard if he be not counted a caterpillar! a muckworm! a very earthly minded man! [F&H]. | |
| ballad title Roxburghe Ballads The Doting Old Dad, or the unequal match betwixt a rich muck-worm of fourscore and ten, and a young lass scarce nineteen . | |
| Love for Love II i: Ouns, whose son are you? How were you engendered, muckworm? | |
| Rare and Good News for Wives in City and Country 3: He must be no other than one of those pittyful Muck-worms, that all day go with Breasts unbutton’d. | |
| Artifice Act III: Life! what is thy Life, Muck-worm, to clean a Room? | |
| Humours of Oxford II i: I’ll have you [...] Rusticated, – Expell’d – I’ll have you [...] where you’ll be devill’d, Muckworm, you will. | |
| Castle of Indolence 26: Here you a Muckworm of the town might see weeds. | |
| Patron in Works (1799) I 333: Are pine-apples for such muckworms as he? | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Two Misers I i: Infernal muck-worms! | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | in New Rev. July 7: You muck-worm, you – I’ll slit your gizzard, you —. |
2. in attrib. use of sense 1.
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Mail (Adelaide) 3 Aug. 2: Mr O’Malley’s muckworm oratory is calculated to lead to his destruction. |
3. a miserly person, a ‘money-grubber’; also attrib [further play on muck n.1 (1)].
| Virgidemiarum (1599) Bk IV 73: Ech muck-worme will be rich with lawlesse gaine. | |
| Englands unthankfulness 25: Loose Libertine [...] Formal Hypocrice, Miserly Muck-worm, [...] Cunning Politician. | |
| Psyche 152: O why should Christians be such muck-worm fools / And Western Gold more deare than Western Souls! | |
| Hey for Honesty II iii: I think there’s not an honest man, But drossy, earthy muckworm-minded vassals. | |
| [ | | Mercurius Fumigosus 60 11-18 July 7: An old Usurers maid [...] took the ambition on her to ascend a Peartree, the fruit of which Tree, the Covetous muck-worme her Master, with his four Eyes, had been telling every Day since May. |
| Works 536: The covetous Muck-worm no sooner openeth his eyes, but his heart is tumbling in his heaps [i.e. of money]. | |
| The divine physician 81: [I]n every Village we shall find a Covetous Muck-worm. | |
| Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Muckworm a covetous Wretch. | |
| Priest-Craft II 40: These High-flyers, one would think, should not be such groveling Muck-worms. | |
| New Canting Dict. [as cit. c.1698]. | |
| Polite Conversation 87: Pray Madam, when did you last see Sir Peter Muckworm? | |
| Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. | |
| Jew I i: Here comes one that supersedes all other visitors – old Sheva, the rich Jew, the merest muck-worm in the city of London. | |
| Lex. Balatronicum. | |
| Dict. of the Turf, the Ring, the Chase, etc. | |
| Mysteries and Miseries of N.Y. I 115: ‘Muck-worm.’ A miser. | |
| Vocabulum. | |
| Ticket-Of-Leave Man Act I: Never heed that muck-worm! | |
| Sl. Dict. (1890). | |
| Aus. Sl. Dict. 51: Muck Worm, a miser. | |
| Dublin Wkly Nation 17 June 11/6: He is never content with the skimpy allowance of one word [...] He is never penny-fathher or muck-worm with his words. | |
| ‘Terms Of Disparagement’ in DN IV:iii 207: muck-worm, -grubber, a miser. ‘A muck-worm never has many friends.’. | |
| ‘Fight!’ Pansies 29: The money-muck [...] and the money-muck-worms, the extant powers that have got you in keep. | |
| (ref. to 1890s) ‘Gloss. of Larrikin Terms’ in Larrikins 203: muckworm: a miser. |
4. one who is mentally or morally degraded.
| ‘Sl. Ditty’ Londonismen (2nd edn) v: Piratical fakers / Of bosh by the acres, / These muck-worms of trash / Cut, oh, a great dash. |