woodworm

English

(Anobium punctatum larva

Grooves made in wood by woodworms

Wikispecies

wood +‎ worm

woodworm (countable and uncountable, plural woodworms)

Any of many beetle larvae that bore into wood.
- 1599, Simon Harward, “A Displaying of the wilfull deuises of wicked and vaine worldlings” in Three Sermons, London: Richard Johns,
  […] Chrisostome doth compaire enuie to the wood worm which though it doe breede in the tymber, yet it doth consume & waste the tymber, as enuie springing of the heart doth putrifie and vtterly eat vp the heart.
- 1872, Robert Louis Stevenson, letter to Mrs. Thomas Stevenson dated July 29, 1872, in Sidney Colvin (editor), The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, New York: Scribner, 1917, Volume I, p. 45,
  There was only one contretemps during the whole interview—the arrival of another visitor, in the shape (surely) the last of God’s creatures, a wood-worm of the most unnatural and hideous appearance, with one great striped horn stucking out of his nose like a boltsprit. If there are many wood-worms in Germany, I shall come home.
- 1992, Colm Tóibín, The Heather Blazing Penguin, 1994, Chapter Two, p. 25,
  His father met a man who said that he had the figure from a ship which went aground near Blackwater Head. It would have to be treated for woodworm, he said.
1. (particularly) Anobium punctatum, the Common Furniture Beetle.
A shipworm, a worm-like mollusk in the family Teredinidae that feeds on wood underwater in saltwater.

larvae that bore into wood