cankerworm

[ kang-ker-wurm ]

noun
  1. an inchworm, the larva of either of two geometrid moths, Paleacrita vernata(spring cankerworm ) and Alsophila pometaria(fall cankerworm: ) a foliage pest of various fruit and shade trees.

Origin of cankerworm

1
First recorded in 1520–30; canker + worm

Words Nearby cankerworm

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use cankerworm in a sentence

  • The stomachs of four other birds of the same species contained about 600 eggs and 105 female moths of the cankerworm.

    Bird Day; How to prepare for it | Charles Almanzo Babcock
  • The cankerworm stood at his right hand, and of all his richest, most precious work, there remains only the shadow.

  • One naturalist found that four Chickadees had eaten one hundred and five female cankerworm moths.

    The Bird Study Book | Thomas Gilbert Pearson
  • This gives a total of nearly twenty thousand cankerworm moth eggs destroyed by four birds in a few minutes.

    The Bird Study Book | Thomas Gilbert Pearson
  • Then surely would the years eaten by the cankerworm be given back!

British Dictionary definitions for cankerworm

cankerworm

/ (ˈkæŋkəˌwɜːm) /


noun
  1. the larva of either of two geometrid moths, Paleacrita vernata or Alsophila pometaria, which feed on and destroy fruit and shade trees in North America

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012